Upper School students in the Human Rights and Genocide History elective visited the St. Louis Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum last week to deepen their knowledge and understanding of the Holocaust.
The field trip included two experiences: listening to a family member of a Holocaust survivor and conducting a self-guided tour of the permanent collection.
Half of the students heard directly from Linda Koenig, whose late husband Jerry was a survivor. Jerry Kaplan escaped from the Warsaw Ghetto with his immediate family and lived in an underground hiding space with 11 people for 22 months. Koenig also shared compelling video clips of Jerry telling his story.
The other half of the group heard from Sophia Kent, who was born in 1946 in Poland to Holocaust survivors. Her parents lived in Bedzin, Poland when the Nazis invaded. They were first forced into a ghetto and then taken to Auschwitz III. Several months later, they were transferred to Gross Rosen Concentration Camp, where they remained until liberation. Upon liberation, they moved back to Poland, but once the pogroms started, they fled and lived in several different displaced persons camps in Germany and Austria. Kent talked about not only how the Holocaust impacted her parents but also how she, as a child, grew up seeing her parents’ trauma without understanding what it was, which has had a defining impact on her own life.
Along the self-guided tour, docents were available to answer questions and add information as students interacted with the exhibits on the dismantling of democracy, the build-up to WWII, the Holocaust itself, and the stories of liberation. The museum provided an informative timeline of the Holocaust as well as insight and connection to the personal stories of victims and survivors of this period of history.
Carla Federman, JK-12 History and Social Sciences Department Chair, hopes that students find ways to connect with those stories of tragedy and survival, as well as understand the agency of individuals during WWII. Visiting the Holocaust Museum gives students a remarkable opportunity to build on their classroom experiences and emphasizes the importance of remembering the past while also recognizing our own ability to impact the present.
“Throughout the Human Rights and Genocide course, we try to emphasize the importance of first-hand accounts, so students have a better understanding of the brutality of what happened and the resilience of the survivors,” said Elizabeth Wells, one of four Upper School History teachers for this course. “This museum has done an amazing job of collecting and archiving so many different stories, and every year, students come away having had an impactful experience, and they gain a deeper appreciation for the need to remember the past.”
MICDS students seized the opportunity to learn more about this seminal moment in history. “One of the most powerful takeaways from visiting the Holocaust museum was realizing how much individual stories shape our understanding of history,” said Isabelle Cox-Garleanu ’26. “It’s one thing to learn about events in terms of numbers and timelines, but listening to the voices of survivors made the history feel alive, fragile, and close. Holding the museum’s telephones to my ear, I felt like I was being entrusted with these survivors’ memories. The quote on the wall upon exiting, ‘If you listen to a witness, you become a witness,’ stayed with me. I think that idea really surrounded us all in the museum—by hearing these accounts, we take on the responsibility of carrying them forward. The whole experience immersed me in the lives of people whose names and stories might otherwise be forgotten, and it made me realize how important it is to not just learn history but to actively remember it.”
“We are so fortunate to have an institution like the Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum here in St. Louis,” said Dr. Tanya Roth, Upper School History Teacher, who guided her class through the experience along with Wells and fellow Upper School History Teachers Cathy Leitch and Kristin Roberts. “Our time there last week was an important extension to our classroom work because students heard from family members of survivors and had the opportunity to watch testimonies of other local Holocaust survivors and revisit the history we’ve learned in a new way.”
We share our deepest gratitude to the St. Louis Holocaust Museum for providing a wealth of exhibits, programs, and personal accounts of survivors. These resources offer a unique opportunity for our students and teachers to learn from those who lived it.