At DuBois Central Catholic, middle school teachers Tara Kramer and Ashley Nelson make history and its lessons come alive for their students. They work collaboratively to connect human experience to the classes they teach in history, culture, and literature. This connection is especially important when they teach about the timeline and events surrounding the Jewish Holocaust in Nazi Germany.
As Mrs. Kramer teaches about WWII and the events that led to it in her social studies class, Mrs. Nelson’s literature class reads The Diary of Anne Frank. Upon completion of the book, Mrs. Kramer’s students then use Oculas glasses to virtually visit the Anne Frank Museum in Amsterdam. They can see what Anne and her family experienced as they hid in their neighbor’s attic. This layering of the curriculum makes both the historical and human impact real and meaningful to the students.
Last year, the teachers added personal testimony to the curriculum when they invited a speaker from the Holocaust Museum in Pittsburgh to visit with students online. This May, Dan Ottenheimer joined the class to tell them about his father Fritz and his family’s trials in Nazi Germany. Fritz’s family lived in Konstanz, Germany, a large town with a population of around 40,000, where Fritz attended school and had a normal childhood. Everything changed for the family in 1933, when Adolf Hitler was elected chancellor. At first, the changes were minor inconveniences. Then, on Kristallnacht in November of 1938, Ottenheimer’s grandfather was arrested and taken to Dachau prison camp. The family began plans to leave Germany.
In 1939, the Ottenheimer family was granted permission to emigrate to America. Fritz attended school and learned English. Upon graduation from high school, he joined the US army, and was deployed to Germany to help the US with the de-Nazification process. In 1982, Fritz became a volunteer speaker for the Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh. He spent many years speaking at schools in Western Pennsylvania, remaining active until he turned 90 years old. Fritz passed away in 2017, at the age of 92. His son Dan continues to tell his father’s story.
Mrs. Nelson arranged the speakers from the Holocaust Museum to show students, “that behind every historical event there are real people with real emotions, families, and stories. When they hear from someone whose parent lived through the Holocaust, it becomes more than just a lesson. It becomes a moment of human connection.”
Next June students will be taking an international trip to tour the Anne Frank Museum in person, allowing students to make even more connections with the lessons they are learning. Mrs. Nelson and Mrs. Kramer both state, “Our hope is that experiences like this help shape our students into more compassionate, thoughtful people who care about others and recognize the importance of standing up for what’s right.”