The Washington Post | February 3, 2022 | By Caitlin Gibson 

During Paul Regelbrugge’s 12 years as a middle school English teacher, he saw firsthand the power of teaching Holocaust history through literature — not just for the adolescents in his classrooms but for their families, too. His former students and their parents still write to him, he says, to share how certain works — such as Nobel laureate Elie Wiesel’s “Night,” a memoir of Wiesel’s experience in concentration camps, and Art Spiegelman’s “Maus,” a Pulitzer-Prize winning graphic novel in which Jews are drawn as mice and Nazis are depicted as cats — have stayed with them, often revisited in family discussions.

So when news spread that a Tennessee school board had voted unanimously in January to remove “Maus” from its 8th grade curriculum, citing objections to nudity and profanity in the text, Regelbrugge, who is now director of education for the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle, found himself receiving messages from former students once again. This time they were forwarding news stories about the ban, along with their own astonished reactions: Have you heard about this? How could they do this?

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Key Peninsula News | December 30, 2021 | By Grace Nesbit 

At the Holocaust Center for Humanity in Seattle there is a student leadership board for students from all over Washington who learn about the Holocaust and related issues, such as genocide, antisemitism and prejudice. I am proud to say that this is my second year on the board.

What I have learned there suggests our society is moving backward. 

One of the common themes in Holocaust education is preventing mass genocide from happening again. However, all around the world genocides have recently occurred or are occurring: Xinjiang, South Sudan, the Central African Republic, Ethiopia, Syria, Myanmar and in many other places. 

How many of those have you heard of? Maybe one or two?

We in America have tunnel vision, which filters out every problem that doesn’t affect us.

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Real Change | January 26, 2022 | By Dee Simon

International Holocaust Remembrance Day marks the 77th anniversary of the liberation of the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp on Jan. 27, 1945. It is a day that the United Nations set aside so that the world would never forget the tragedy that defined the word “genocide.”

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and annihilation of European Jewry by Nazi Germany and its collaborators between 1933 and 1945. Six million Jewish men, women and children were murdered. Hundreds of thousands of others were targeted, including Roma, people with disabilities, Poles, gay men, Germans of African heritage, Jehovah’s Witnesses and political dissidents.

By observing this day of remembrance, we honor the survivors and victims of the Holocaust. We give ourselves the opportunity to reflect on the moral responsibilities of individuals, societies and governments. On this day, we challenge ourselves to actively fight hate in all its forms. 

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Friday, March 19, 2021
 

The Holocaust Center for Humanity is shocked and saddened by the recent murders in Atlanta that took the lives of eight people, including six Asian women. We grieve with the families and friends of the victims and the broader community.

While the motive for these murders is not yet known, they were committed at a time of increasing violent attacks on Asian American and Pacific Islanders and are rooted in racism and xenophobia. 

The Holocaust Center stands in unity with the Asian and Pacific Islander communities and all people who are targeted with identity based violence. We remain dedicated to empowering individuals to learn from the past, fight for human dignity, and take action.

As a member of the Jewish Community Relations Council, we stand in solidarity. 

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