CONWAY -- The Arkansas Holocaust Education Committee provided teachers with a free half-day workshop last weekend to help them provide students with the information "in historically accurate ways while connecting historical material to contemporary issues," organizers said.
Roughly three dozen teachers participated, learning about a variety of online resources. They also received copies of "The U.S. and the Holocaust," a three-part, six hour series that aired last year on PBS, and copies of "Why? Explaining the Holocaust" by Northwestern University professor emeritus Peter Hayes.
Beginning this year, Holocaust education must be taught in all of the state's public schools.
The word "Holocaust" ("Holocausto" in Spanish) was initially the word used by some Bible translators to signify the "burnt offerings" to God mentioned in Leviticus 1 and elsewhere.
Since World War II, it has been used to describe the murder of approximately 6 million Jews carried out by Nazi Germany and its allies.
Others, in Israel and elsewhere, refer to it as the Shoah, a Hebrew word meaning "catastrophe." The Yiddish term is "Churban," meaning "destruction."
Act 611, passed by the state Legislature in 2021 and signed into law by then-Gov. Asa Hutchinson, requires educators to teach students about the "causes, course and effects of the Holocaust" in a way that encourages "dialogue with students on the ramifications of bullying, bigotry, stereotyping and discrimination."
The aim, in part, is to encourage "tolerance of diversity and reverence for human dignity for all citizens in a pluralistic society."
The workshop came one day after International Holocaust Remembrance Day, which coincides with the anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz concentration camp by Soviet armed forces Jan. 27, 1945.
Sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Arkansas, the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum and Arkansas PBS, it was led by John Brown University Professor Kevin Simpson, Hendrix College Professor Dorian Stuber and featured a presentation by Bryant High School teacher Ricky Manes, a longtime leader in Holocaust education in Arkansas.
Monday was the 90th anniversary of Adolf Hitler's appointment as chancellor of Germany.
Manes was an advocate for Act 611 and says he'd like to see similar laws in all 50 states. Thus far, at least 21 states have adopted Holocaust education requirements, according to the Holocaust museum in Washington.
Earlier in his career, Manes would invite Holocaust survivors to share their stories with students, but as the years pass the number of first-hand eyewitnesses is dwindling.
"Those people who have it in their memories are leaving us, unfortunately," he said.
"Everyone that we've had in speaking to people, when someone asks them 'Why are you here today?' and 'Why are you speaking about this?' they say, 'Because we're going to be gone and we need you to carry on our memory.'"
Their testimonies, Manes maintains, must never be forgotten.
"It's up to the generation that we are to keep it going," he said.