EDUCATION

TEACHING THE HISTORY

The Jewish Foundation for the Righteous (JFR) is committed to teaching the history of the Holocaust and to preserving the legacy of Righteous Gentiles, non-Jews who risked their lives to save Jews during the Holocaust. We do this through our Holocaust teacher education program.

GOALS

Our education program comprises four key elements:

• JFR-published educational materials;
• the Alfred Lerner Fellowship program;
• a Holocaust Centers of Excellence program; and
• educational seminars, institutes, and workshops for teachers and students.

The JFR education program educates middle and high school teachers from across the United States and Eastern Europe as well as U.S. Holocaust center personnel about the history of the Holocaust, rescue, and the context in which these heroic rescuers acted.

OBJECTIVES

The objectives of the JFR teacher education program are:

• To provide high quality Holocaust teacher education that runs the gamut from an introduction of the subject to intense study at residential seminars and institutes.
• To improve Holocaust teacher education by working with established Holocaust centers across the country and to complement the efforts of other organizations working in the field.
• To expose teachers to the best in current scholarship on the Holocaust, to develop their knowledge of the subject, and to treat teachers as serious learners and educators.
• To develop a skilled network of teachers who teach the history of the Holocaust and rescue.

As a result of our program, there is now a cadre of over 400 master teachers from across the U.S. and Eastern Europe who have a firm grounding in the history of the Holocaust and the subject of rescue. These teachers are now in a position to teach their peers as well as generations of students about the Holocaust. With the generous support of the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany (Claims Conference), the JFR has had a widespread impact on Holocaust education throughout the United States.