Harrisburg School District to host 'Teaching About the Holocaust Symposium'

The Harrisburg School District is holding a “Teaching About the Holocaust Symposium” this Tuesday to enhance educators’ understanding and teaching of Holocaust history.

The district was approached by the Jewish Community Relations Council of Minnesota and the Dakotas about hosting the event, and it’s the first site in North or South Dakota to hold such an event in conjunction with the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and the Council, district communications director JoAnne VerMulm said.

Tuesday’s event, from 8:30 a.m. to 4 p.m. at Harrisburg North Middle School, is slated to include presentations from experts on Holocaust education, instructional resources to aid in teaching efforts like books and lesson materials, an opportunity to earn graduate credits, and representation from 11 different school districts.

An agenda for Tuesday’s symposium includes the following events:

• A presentation on the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum’s guidelines for teaching about the Holocaust.
• An interactive timeline activity, including South Dakota-specific history on people and companies that “worked for the war effort,” according to a press release.
• A school leadership roundtable on antisemitism and the “unique, dangerous ways anti-Jewish bias manifests today,” and “the challenges school communities face, and the responses necessary.”
• A presentation entitled “Some Were Neighbors: Collaboration and Complicity in the Holocaust,” which seeks to answer a central question about how the Holocaust was possible and the variety of motives and pressures that influenced choices individuals made.
• A presentation entitled “Oath and Opposition: Education under the Third Reich,” which is a case study module on the ethics of the teaching profession and the choices individual teachers made during the Holocaust.

This article originally appeared on Sioux Falls Argus Leader: Harrisburg School District to host 'Teaching About the Holocaust Symposium'