Bill encourages Oklahoma educators to use Holocaust as moral learning exercise

TULSA, Okla. — About 100 teachers gathered at the Jewish Federation of Tulsa on Friday to learn about insightful ways to teach about the Holocaust. This comes after Senate Bill 1671 passed last year, allowing teaching about it in multiple courses and encouraging diversity.

Eva Unterman is one of three remaining Holocaust survivors in the Tulsa area.

“We were hunted,” Unterman said. “My parents hid me many times when the word got around they were coming.”

She was six years old when Germany invaded her family’s home in Poland in 1939. Unterman and her family went to multiple concentration camps, including Auschwitz. Through it all, her mother was by her side.

“It is something that the world must know, of what we, human begins, are capable of doing to others who we see as not quite the same,” Unterman said.

It’s why Unterman says she’s on board with educators near and far teaching accurate information about the Holocaust in classrooms.

“I think it’s very important, and unfortunately, we live in a time where there is anti-semitism, I am being told, rising, and I think we need to stop it at the very beginning,” Unterman said.

Senate Bill 1671 requires sixth through twelfth graders to get holocaust education in public schools, not only social studies classes.

Anika Rohla is a teacher in Seiling, Okla., who has been teaching about the Holocaust for over a decade. She’s also from Germany.

“As an English teacher, and maybe it’s just my approach, I want my students to be engaged not only with the historical aspect but the moral components,” Rohla said.

The bill states teachers can develop a dialogue with students about the ramifications of bullying, bigotry, stereotyping, and the like.

Oklahoma State Representative John Waldron co-authored the bill.

“We need to be able to let students handle difficult subjects, think about them for themselves, and learn their own lessons,” Waldron said.

Unterman hopes those lessons can make students become the best human beings they can be.

“I think it’s important to know how important words are,” Unterman said. “It always starts with words.”

The conference coordinator says the goal is not only to emphasize that the Holocaust is a Jewish story but a lesson of the destructive nature of hate, fear, and mistrust.

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