Ma’ayanot marked Yom HaShoah with intense and thought-provoking programming. In the morning, the school heard from Norbert Strauss, who shared his story of a frightening childhood in Germany and of escaping to America through Spain. Students asked insightful questions, and later discussed how to remember the Holocaust after the survivors are gone. Eleventh grader Miriam Fisch shared her response: “We often stick to the two extremes: the statistics alone, or connecting to the most heart-wrenching images,” said Miriam. “We don’t always think about what our speaker talked about—the terror of daily life while still at home and the hashgacha in making things happen.”

In the afternoon, students chose to view one of three films about confronting the ongoing impact of the Holocaust: “Woman in Gold,” about recovering stolen artwork; “Operation Finale,” about the capture of Adolf Eichmann; and “Denial,” about the fight against Holocaust deniers. Tenth grader Aliza Cohn, who viewed “Operation Finale,” said “It taught me a lot about what went into finding Eichmann. It also opened my eyes to the anti-Semitism after the Holocaust. In general, it was an amazing program and I learned a lot over the course of the day.”