Origins and Original Intent

The study of the Holocaust at institutions of higher learning is not uncommon. Since the mid-1970s there has been a proliferation of Holocaust teaching in colleges and universities.1 Many colleges and universities have centers for Holocaust and/or Genocide Studies. Others have departments of Judaic/Jewish Studies that deal with the Holocaust. What is less common, however, is for a college to integrate the study of the Holocaust throughout its curriculum, thus institutionalizing it as major focus in the life of the institution. What is even more unusual is that this has been done at a college whose original mission was to train ministers and teachers for the German Evangelical Church and is still affiliated with its successor the United Church of Christ. Elmhurst College in Elmhurst, Illinois just west of Chicago, is such an institution.

Since 1991, this small liberal arts college has made a commitment to develop and implement a multi-faceted Holocaust Education Project that is inter-disciplinary, international and inter-faith in scope. Designed to foster the development of humane values, respect for human differences, commitment to responsible action, and the affirmation of the interdependence of the human family, this project corresponds precisely with the overall mission of the college. Elmhurst College is committed to the creation and support of a diverse and caring community of scholars, teachers, students and staff who embrace humane values, critical thinking and responsible citizenship. The Holocaust provides a deeply meaningful way by which to implement this mission across the entire spectrum of students, faculty, disciplines and activities that make up this institution.

The focal point of this project has been the annual Holocaust Education Guestship which was the brain-child of college Chaplain Dr. Steve Monhollen. Upon arriving at Elmhurst in 1988, Monhollen wondered at first whether a one-time lecture on the Holocaust might be possible. One the advice of Ken Bartels, Vice-President for College Advancement and then President Dr. Ivan Frick, Monhollen consulted key senior administrators and all department chairpersons to gauge their interest. He was moved by the significant interest in Holocaust education on campus. College and community members suggested that they would benefit from an annual emphasis upon the leadership qualities of ethical discernment and respect for difference as explored through the Holocaust and the encounter with its eyewitnesses. He recruited a Steering Committee that explored ideas for Holocaust education. An advisory board member, Dr. Alan E. Cole, suggested the committee consider the guestship model at Oberlin College. The Steering Committee and the Chaplain believed that this model would meet its goals and could be adapted it to Elmhurst College's particular setting and needs. First, the guestship would give the campus sustained contact with eyewitnesses and scholars of the Holocaust. A further goal was that such a program would provide a means to search for human, ethical values which give fuller meaning to the idea of the educated person. The Chaplain's personal interest and educational background in the Holocaust made such a project a natural for him to formulate. He realized that the project would build naturally upon the college's heritage. Apart from the religious background of the institution and its liberal arts academic mission, one of the college's most distinguished alumni, Reinhold Niebuhr, was involved during the early 1940s with a committee that was instrumental in rescuing many prominent intellectuals from France (including Marc Chagall) during the Nazi occupation of that country. Niebuhr also developed a friendship with Elie Wiesel who would eventually serve on the Honorary Holocaust Guestship Committee at Elmhurst, be the project's most prominent guestship lecturer and be the recipient of the college's first Niebuhr Medal.

The guestship model was selected because it provided an opportunity for students, faculty and community members to meet formally and informally over several days with Holocaust educators and eyewitnesses. Instead of bringing someone on campus who would give a single "high profile" lecture and then depart, the guestship model would allow them to give a primary lecture to a large audience, but also then to give less formal presentations to smaller groups, principally in classroom settings, over lunch and at informal discussions. Apart from providing more time for speakers and their audiences to interact, the guestship model also "humanizes" the speaker and the learning process. In addition, this model facilitated the college's desire to make the Holocaust Education Project as student- and faculty-centered as possible. By encouraging students and faculty to interact with Holocaust educators on a personal level, the learning process is greatly enhanced, thus making the experience much more likely to leave a lasting impression on all involved, especially students.

As mentioned previously, the intent was to make Elmhurst's Holocaust Education Project a multi-faceted one and within the framework of the guestship model, this meant including much more than just a presentation by a high-profile Holocaust educator. The inclusion of art, music, literature, film and theater components was seen as essential to accomplishing the overall educational goal of the project. The intention, which has been realized, was to include a collection of visual, literary and musical expressions which represent the experiences of the Holocaust from sources both internal and external to the college. Of particular importance has been the effort to encourage Elmhurst College students and faculty to enhance their learning experience by creating artistic, literary and theatrical works relating to the Holocaust.

Overall Theme and Educational Components

From its inception, Elmhurst College's Holocaust Education Project has focused on the theme of rescuers and resisters and the experience of children. There are multiple rationales: First, rescue and resistance required the courage to question. Young college students can relate to this and one of the goals of liberal arts education is to encourage their natural tendency to question. The expectation, which again has been realized, was that students would raise questions such as: why more people didn't become rescuers or resisters, why some people chose not to rescue or resist, and why the institutions of society failed to resist more? Second, the focus on rescuers and resisters shows the difficulty and significance of these efforts by Jews, Christians and others in the presence of overwhelming Nazi aggression and persecution. Third, there is value in students learning about individuals who made ethical-moral decisions and who took action against tyranny during the Holocaust. Fourth, it is important that students understand the element of caring and compassion that relates to the efforts of rescuers. Finally, several Christian communions, including the Roman Catholic Church and the United Church of Christ (with which Elmhurst College is affiliated) have acknowledged the complicity of Christianity in the teaching of contempt toward Jews and Judaism. This acknowledgement facilitates the examination and current application of this teaching. In addition, it invites a discussion of the failure of the institutions and professions, including the churches, to resist the Nazi regime. Further, it opens the opportunity to explore the vocation of the professions in our own era in light of their failure in that era. This is especially important at a college with a central focus on the liberal arts and professional preparation.

Another important focus for the Project has been on the experiences of children during the Holocaust. As an educational institution with a large pre-service teacher preparation program, it seemed natural to provide our students with an understanding of an often neglected aspect of the Holocaust which relates directly to a segment of the population with whom many of them will eventually be working. Directly related to this theme is the teacher education workshop component of the annual Holocaust Guestship event. Designed to support the State of Illinois' Holocaust Education law of 1990 which mandates "every public elementary and high school shall include in its curriculum a unit of instruction studying the events of the Nazi atrocities of 1933-1945 (Section 27-20.3 School Code of IL), this workshop has served both Elmhurst College education majors and in-service teachers from throughout the Chicago area. The workshops emphasize methodologies for teaching about the Holocaust at all levels of public education as well as information on resources that are available to teachers. In some years, the guest lecturer is directly involved in the workshop while in other years Elmhurst faculty, area in-service public school teachers or other special speakers take the lead. This event has become one of the most popular and well attended during the guestship week.

An additional component of the guestship week has been the interaction between the guest lecturer(s), students and faculty in the classrooms. In many instances this has involved the guests meeting with students from a single class and on other occasions several classes have been combined, although the number of students rarely exceeds 50. It is during the interaction at these informal, more intimate sessions with the guest(s) that the students gain the greatest insight into the Holocaust experience. Many students have remarked that prior to such an encounter, they had not understood the scope of human emotions, suffering and tragedy that engulfed people involved in the Holocaust.

Holocaust education activities conducted by Elmhurst College faculty focus not only on the guestship event, but span the entire academic year. In this way, Holocaust education has become truly integrated into the overall curriculum of the college. These initiatives have been multi-disciplinary, involving faculty from a majority of departments on campus. Several departments have developed courses that fit into the Holocaust education curriculum. Some of these courses have been one-time specialty courses taught during the college's January Term while others have been offered on a regular basis during fall or spring semesters. The Theology, Foreign Languages and Literature and Communications departments have all developed one or more courses that deal with the Holocaust. Of particular note is Dr. Wallace Lagerway's "Genocide and the Holocaust" course which has been offered through the Foreign Language and Literature Department each spring since 1997. Originally intended primarily as a course that fulfilled the college's general education requirement in the Search for Human Values category, it has more recently become very popular, as an elective, with education majors as well as others. It is believed that this reflects the realization of many Elmhurst College students of the importance and relevance of studying the Holocaust. The Communications Department's Holocaust Theater course has become instrumental in providing students with a way in which to develop creative and artistic expressions related to the Holocaust. Dr. Tim Good of this department, with student involvement, wrote, produced and performed an original play about the Nazi Labensborn program for the 2001 Holocaust Guestship. Other faculty members, including those from the Education, English and Geography departments have utilized the well known Facing History and Ourselves curriculum as a basis to study issues stemming from the Holocaust in many of their courses. In support of these Holocaust education efforts, the college's library has assembled a sizable Holocaust collection of written and multi-media materials related to the Holocaust.

Mechanics of Program Implementation

The Guestship project at Elmhurst College has been administered out of the Chaplain's office with support from the College Advancement Office, with the Chaplain reporting directly to the Vice-President for College Advancement and the president of the college. Actual planning, organization and implementation of the program has been the responsibility of a Guestship Committee headed by the Chaplain. While specific membership of the Committee has routinely changed over the years, the basic composition has included members of the College's Board of Trustees (Abner Gannet), Holocaust survivors (Erna Gans and Gerda Luner), faculty, students, staff, administrators and friends of the college who are committed to Holocaust education, mainly local clergy. The goal has been to ensure an interfaith and interdisciplinary composition to the committee. Of particular importance has been the inclusion of Rabbi Steven Bob of Congregation Etz Chaim on the committee from its inception. The Guestship has benefited greatly from what can be called a "partnership" forged between Elmhurst College and Etz Chaim. In addition to Rabbi Bob's active participation on the Committee, Etz Chaim has provided some funding for the project as well as overall support from its members. It has also been a feature of the Guestship to actually hold events at the synagogue. In addition to the Guestship Committee, there has always been a Steering Committee consisting of those individual who were instrumental in the initial formulation of the project. This group, most of who are also on the Guestship Committee, serves as a permanent executive body. There is also an International Advisory Board that consists of many well known Holocaust educators and scholars, including most past speakers from the Guestship such as ElieWiesel, Douglas Huneke, Nechama Tec and Deborah Dwork.

From the beginning, the role of students and faculty on the Guestship Committee has been essential. By having a cross-section of both groups on the committee, the widest range of viewpoints and interests are represented and a broad consensus can be achieved regarding the selection of speakers and activities to be included in each year's event. Faculty participation has fluctuated over the years, but has seen a gradual increase to the present. This has been seen as key to the goal of institutionalizing both the Guestship project and Holocaust education as a whole at Elmhurst College. While this increase in faculty participation on the Committee has been encouraging, the goal of a truly interdisciplinary representation has still to be realized. The 2001 Guestship, however, saw an unprecedented level of participation by faculty from a wide spectrum of disciplines and hopefully, this will not only continue into the future, but may result in a more diverse faculty membership on the Committee. Over the years, various college and community organizations have lent support to the Guestship by becoming sponsors. These include, the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, the EC Alumni Association, Campus Life Council, Campus Ministry and various honor societies at the college.

1991-1999: EC Holocaust Guestship - A Dream Realized and Implemented

From its inception in 1991, the Guestship's format has been fairly standardized although it has continued to evolve with additional components being added over the years. The length of the event has ranged from as few as three days to as many as five. In most years, the event would begin on Sunday or Monday and run through Wednesday or Thursday. The main focus, of course, has been on the primary guest speaker or in some years, speakers. They have generally given a keynote presentation at some point during the week (usually either Sunday or Tuesday) and then interacted with classes from Monday through Wednesday or Thursday. A panel discussion/open forum format has been used on occasion (1997 & 1998). The Teacher Education Workshop has been a feature of every Guestship, being held on Wednesday or Thursday in the earlier years (1991-1995) and on Tuesday evening since 1996. Some years also have included a special Remembrance Service (Yom Hashoah), but this has not been a regular feature of the event.

In keeping with the theme of rescuers and resisters, the Holocaust Education Committee has endeavored to bring individuals to campus who have either experience as a rescuer/resister, were rescued themselves or have done research into the issues surrounding rescue and resistance. The speakers featured in the 1991 through 1993 Guestships reflect this emphasis. Dr. Douglas K. Huneke (1991) has researched and written on the moral development of rescuers, Dr. Marion Binsbergen Pritchard (1992) was a rescuer who hid Jewish children in Holland from 1942-1945 and has been featured in several documentaries and books, and Dr. Nechama Tec (1993) was a child in Poland during the war and was hidden by Christian rescuers and has written about her experiences and the Holocaust in several books. The 1994 Guestship reflected the shift in theme to children of the Holocaust and featured Dr. Deborah Dwork, a Yale professor whose specialty is researching the experiences of Jewish children during the Holocaust.

The Guestships after 1994 took on a more varied format relying more on multiple speakers who often interacted with students and faculty almost exclusively in the classroom setting or through panel-type discussions as opposed to a primary lecture presentation. For example, the 1996 program featured three different presentations by Dr. Yehuda Bauer, Professor of Holocaust Studies at Hebrew University, Jerusalem. Dr. Bauer presented data in three different locations; two on the Elmhurst College campus and one at the Etz Chaim synagogue. Dr.'s Pritchard and Tec returned in 1998 to discuss in an open forum setting the role of Christians and especially women as rescuers and resisters. This period also saw a shift in theme to more specific aspects of Holocaust education. In 1997, Dr.'s Jan Colijn and Dienke Hondius focused on the dairies of Holocaust victims, especially Anne Frank, interacting with several classes on campus and participating in a panel discussion that also included several Elmhurst College faculty members. Of particular note was Dr. Lagerway's presentation which put Anne Frank's dairy into perspective with other memoirs of the Holocaust. The week was capped off by multiple performances of the legendary play "The Dairy of Anne Frank" by Elmhurst College theater students. Holocaust denial was the theme of the 1999 Guestship bringing the renowned Dr. Deborah Lipstadt to Elmhurst College to address this important issue, especially as it has played out both on college campuses and in the courts. Dr. Jeffrey Ross, Director, Department of Campus & Higher Education Affairs of the Anti-Defamation League joined her. These two scholars utilized both lecture and panel discussion formats to interact with students. Merle Gross, a volunteer interviewer for the Steven Spielberg Survivors of the Shoah Visual History Foundation was also featured at 1999's Guestship. The 2000 Guestship brought Dr. Stephen Haynes to Elmhurst to discuss the theme of Holocaust education at church-related schools. This theme also prompted a panel discussion on the subject involving members of the Elmhurst College faculty, local clergy and local survivors. The teacher education program for 2000 featured a presentation by Facing History and Ourselves Foundation about the role of education in Nazi Germany and the Holocaust.

A highlight of the Elmhurst College's Guestship program was the appearance of Elie Wiesel in 1995. A world-renowned Holocaust scholar and speaker, Wiesel's presentation, drew over a thousand people from around the Chicago area and marked a shift in the guestship model. Mr. Wiesel was unable to stay for the week and gave the single presentation. He did, however, meet with a select group of students and faculty while he was on campus. In conjunction with Wiesel's appearance there were several forums during the week to discuss his books The Forgotten and Night. The 1995 program brought to campus five survivors in addition to Wiesel, including two who had been on Schindler's list, who interacted with students and faculty, appearing in nine different classes over a two-day period. The two Schindler's list survivors also answered questions after a showing of the film.

In addition to the primary Guestship speaker(s), the college's Holocaust Education events have included a wide variety of supplemental activities (including common readings given to students and faculty), performances and presentations. These have been designed to provide as wide a range of Holocaust education experiences as possible. On three occasions (1993, 1994 and 2000) the Schulhoff Trio performed the concertino Honoring the Memories of Light prior to the guest lectures. Also in 1994, the college published an Occassional Paper entitled In Thy Light: Dialectic Faith and the Holocaust featuring essays by several Elmhurst College faculty as well as others. The 1995 Guestship program featured a unique event in which two registered nurses from a Chicago-area nursing care facility where several survivors reside, presented a lecture entitled "The Impact on Aging of Early Life Trauma" to a large group of the college's nursing students in a clinical nursing seminar. Art exhibits have also been featured as a part of several of the Guestships, including one entitled Out of the Darkness that featured photographs depicting the refugee experience during the Holocaust. That same year, 1996, the concert choir devoted its entire concert season to learning and presenting a composition by Robert Convery entitled Songs of Children, a cantata of nine poems written by Jewish children interned at Terezin, a Nazi concentration camp.

2001 - An Exceptional Guestship Event

The 2001 Holocaust Guestship was unique and special in many ways. It departed from past Guestships in a number of respects. The Guestship had traditionally occurred in April to coincide with Yom HaShoah. In 2001, the Guestship shifted to November, partly due to logistical necessity, but also because the Committee felt that it would be appropriate to time the event in order to help people remember the event known as Kristallnacht, which occurred on November 9-10, 1938. Its format, while upholding the guestship model, did not include a single keynote speaker, but instead involved bringing to the campus as many Holocaust survivors/witnesses as possible. In fact, the title of the 2001 Guestship was 'Eyewitnesses Telling Their Stories."

Initially the suggestion was made to bring 100 survivors to the campus, but upon investigation it was determined that this number was probably unrealistic so the plans were modified to simply bring as many survivors/witnesses to interact with Elmhurst students as possible. Logistically, this ambitious plan presented numerous challenges. How would the survivors/witnesses be located? Would they be willing to come and speak with students over a three day period? How would they get to the campus? Would the faculty as a whole want to participate? Undaunted by these potential obstacles, the Committee set to work in the fall of 2000 to coordinate what turned out to be the largest gathering of Holocaust survivors/witnesses on one college campus ever.

With full support from the college administration and Congregation Etz Chaim, the Committee contacted two sources that were known to coordinate the appearance of Holocaust speakers at schools in the Chicago area, the Chicago office of Facing History and Ourselves and the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois in Skokie, Illinois. (In addition to the speakers provided through these two organizations, two members of the Committee were witnesses themselves.) When the latter organization first received word of the unique but ambitious plan of the college, its initial response was one of skepticism. The idea of getting dozens if not more survivors to assemble in a single location over an extended period of time seemed improbable at best. It had never been attempted before in the Chicago area. However, upon making initial inquiries to survivors on their speakers lists, both Facing History and the Foundation received a positive response to the idea from virtually everyone. In fact, many of the survivors/witnesses were excited and intrigued by the idea of speaking to small groups of students in a classroom setting as opposed to addressing hundreds in an auditorium which was the format most were used to. Working with these two agencies, members of the Committee were able to arrange transportation for all of the survivors/witnesses who required it. Many of them made their way to the campus on their own. Coordination was also required to get the speakers to their assigned classrooms on time during the three day session. Students and faculty volunteers served as escorts to the speakers while they were on campus.

Securing the participation of as many faculty members as possible was essential to the success of this Guestship. The hope was that there would be a survivor/witness in every class during the three day period, however, this proved impractical since participation of faculty was voluntary and there were simply not enough speakers to fill the approximately 500 classes that met during the time period. In order to insure the highest level of participation possible, however, the Committee began a campaign of informing the entire faculty of the event as early as March 2001. With this much advance notice, faculty could incorporate the event into their fall semester course planning and syllabi. A primary goal of the Committee was to get faculty from a wide range of disciplines to open up their classes to the survivors/witnesses. In order to accomplish this, the Committee had to convey the applicability of such an event to the overall mission and liberal arts philosophy of the college as well as to the very diverse subject matter being taught by various faculty. To accomplish this, faculty were given the opportunity to attend one of three preparatory seminars on Holocaust education given by several Committee members as well as advisors from Facing History. These seminars provided both teaching strategies and resource material that instructors could utilize to help prepare their students for interacting with the speakers. These were well attended and undoubtedly contributed to the willingness of faculty to participate.

Another issue which was critical to the educational success of this Guestship event was the video taping of the survivor/witness speakers. It was felt that capturing their experiences as well as the interaction with and reaction of students was essential to fulfilling the goal of preserving a record of the Holocaust for future generations. Although a few of the speakers requested not to be videotaped, a majority agreed to it willingly. The college's Media Center provided the equipment and personnel to videotape approximately fifty percent of the classroom sessions. These tapes have become part of the college library's permanent Holocaust collection.

The 2001 Guestship was highlighted, of course, by the interaction between the survivors/witnesses and students/faculty, but it was actually a collection of inter-related events which took place between November 4th and 10th. The week's events began with a reception for the art exhibit The Book Of Fire by renowned lithographer Murray Zimiles. The artist was in attendance to discuss his work that portrays the destruction of synagogues in Poland during the Holocaust. This is a traveling exhibit and its month long showing at Elmhurst College marked its Midwest debut. As in past years, the teacher workshop played a central role in the 2001 event. Featured was a local middle school teacher who had developed an interdisciplinary Holocaust education curriculum. She provided a profile of the program to an audience of over 200 in-service and pre-service teachers. Following her presentation a member of the Committee Abner Ganet addressed the group. Mr. Ganet was in the US Army in World War II and was present at the liberation of Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. He spoke passionately about the importance of Holocaust education at all levels in public schools. Wednesday, November 7 saw the premier of The Fount Of Life, a play about the Nazi Lebensborn Project. The play, performed by Elmhurst College students, was written and directed by Dr. Tim Good of the college's Department of Communications Arts and Science. The play ran for four consecutive nights at the college's Mill Theater. The week's events were capped off by a brief Service of Remembrance on Thursday November 8. Several of the survivors/witnesses attended this service as did many students, faculty and community members.

The unprecedented experience and success of the 2001 Elmhurst College Holocaust Guestship can be best illustrated by citing some statistics. During the three-day period of November 5 through 7, thirty survivors/witnesses spoke in seventy-two different classes hosted by forty-seven faculty members representing seventeen of the twenty-two departments at the college. It is estimated that nearly 1300 of the college's 2000 students were present in one or more of these classes. Many students had the opportunity to see between three and five speakers during the three day period. The ultimate measure of the event's impact, however, can be assessed by the sampling of student remarks made in their journals from various classes that had speakers in them.

"The speech by Mrs. Dermin was completely captivating. It left me speechless as well as extremely grateful of the life that I have lived…"

"The speaker really touched me with her story. I've heard other Holocaust survivors speak before, but none of them had as interesting or painful of a story as she did. Whenever she said things like "That was the last time I saw my mother", I tried to comprehend what that would feel like."

"This last week has been and always will be imbedded in my mind forever. I believe having that survivor talk to our class was the best experience any of us could ever have. She bestowed upon us the opportunity to remember the past and share it with generations to come…I still can hear her voice as she spoke of losing her loved ones. Hearing these horrendous events in the first person is now burned into my mind."

"I was moved by the immediacy and intimacy of the letters. It is completely true, as our dramatizer said, that millions of human beings are a number, but one human being or one family is small enough to begin to care about. We need these testimonials to remind us that these are human beings like ourselves."

"This has been a very emotional week for many people; speakers, listeners, and anyone who shared in the experience that (we) were lucky to participate in. I was fortunate enough to hear a witness account on three different occasions. Each and everyone moved me in a different way, yet no one way more than the other. There really are not many words to describe the deep impact that these courageous people have made on me and my life, except admiration."

"I was glad I was able to hear three of the Holocaust speakers. After each speaker, I went home and shared my experiences with my family…As a soon to be educator, I now see how it is our job to teach this part of history. It is important and should never be forgotten."

 

1 The Holocaust Encyclopedia, Walter Laqueur, ed., New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001, p. 310.