Greensboro, North Carolina— The Holocaust was hard to understand, sad, and complicated, but that doesn’t mean its history shouldn’t be taught.
The Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act was signed into law in North Carolina in November 2021. The law, which was signed by Governor Roy Cooper, says that public middle and high schools must teach about the Holocaust.
Supporters of the bill say that this teaching is even more important now than ever because antisemitism is on the rise and Holocaust deniers are becoming more vocal and even mainstream.
It’s important to learn about the Holocaust. “Not only to know what happened, but also to learn something about the Jewish people before the Holocaust,” Rabbi Guttman said. “What kind of society and country do we want to make here?”
Guttman has been teaching about the Holocaust for forty years. So he had an idea. He thought that schools should teach more about the Holocaust.
“I took Jewish groups to Poland 20 times to learn about the Holocaust, and I thought it would be a good idea to share what I knew about leading groups and guiding in Poland with the teachers here,” Guttman said. “And if we could find the teachers, they could teach both kids and other teachers.”
Picture a wave going around.
Guttman came up with a plan to bring every summer dozens of public school teachers from all over the state to Poland. They would take a free, eight-day training on the Holocaust that would be very in-depth.
So they wouldn’t just read about how the Nazi government and its partners persecuted and killed six million Jews and millions of other people during World War II; they would live it.
The teachers went to Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, and Majdanek, where they were led by Guttman and Lee Holder from the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. They also went to places like the town of Tykocin that aren’t talked about much in American history books.
Guttman said, “We take them to a place where there used to be a great Jewish community. One day, the Jews were rounded up, taken out into the forest, and shot.”
Two groups of North Carolina public school teachers from 43 of the state’s 100 counties have already gone on the NC Educators Trip to Poland.
“Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said that when you hear a witness, you become a witness,” Guttman said. “That was easy back when there were a lot of Holocaust survivors who could talk about it…” It is because of this trip that these 36 teachers are witnesses.
Guttman said it was “enormously powerful” to see the places through the teachers’ eyes.
Guttman said, “I knew what Jewish adults and Jewish kids would see before I took the teachers.” “But I hadn’t seen those things before the teachers’ eyes.” And sometimes it was really hard for them.
He has already done a lot of good work in his life as rabbi emeritus at Greensboro’s Temple Emanuel, but this project might be the most important one he has ever worked on.
Guttman said, “I feel very proud of this.” “What we’re doing is important for our state, the kids we’re raising, and the education they’re getting. It might even be able to show other states how to do it.”
Three of the 36 teachers from Guilford County who went on the NC Educators Trip to Poland in June 2024 are from that county.