2020 JSU Gala Journal

Michael’s father, Andrew Rauchman, was born in Zdana, Czechoslovakia to Moritz and
Katarina. At the age of 18 he was taken to a Hungarian forced labor camp along with his
elder brother, while his father, mother and younger sister were transported to Auschwitz.
His father and siblings did not survive. He left Czechoslovakia on a Guatemalan visa to join
his mother in Vienna. In 1950 he immigrated to Montreal, Canada. At that time, Montreal
was home to the second largest community of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel.
Anna and Andrew met in Montreal and married in 1953. Michael recalls growing up hearing
the stories of his parents and their friends who survived the Shoah. More than 70 years
later Holocaust studies is an academic discipline and there is a push to make this discipline
“relevant” by generalizing its lessons about genocide and man’s inhumanity to man. “As
children of survivors, Ariane and I see it as our obligation to pass on the personal stories of
survivors to the next generation of Jews. Our hope is that through this program, the current
generation of high school students will see the Shoah as not just one of many tragic events
in world history, but a particular story of the Jewish people, part their own story.”
The course content is being developed by noted educator Rabbi Yitz Staum, in collaboration
with JRoots, US Holocaust Museum and the Kaplan Feldman Holocaust Museum, and with
guidance from Dana Humphrey, Dan Reich, Warren Rosenblum, Rabbi Tzvi Sperber and
Rabbi Berel Wein among others.
JRoots is one of the primary Holocaust education organizations with whom we have been
closely working. They have developed curricula specifically for teens and young adults
complete with live (via zoom) tours of the places about which the students will learn.
Another beneficial aspect of collaborating with JRoots is that we can tap any of their expert
educators to teach different parts of the course.
Goals of the Course
• To provide accessible, engaging, inspiring and meaningful Holocaust education to
public schools through JSU.
• To provide the students with an approach to the Holocaust through a uniquly
Jewish lens.
• To familiarize students with basic events and facts about the Holocaust.
• To humanize the story of the Holocaust in the eyes of students.
• To encourage students to pursue their engagement with Holocaust education, in
school or beyond.
General Notes
This course is designed to be modular and can be restructured and or tweaked to meet the
different needs of the JSU students or the student body makeup of other organizations with
whom we either teach the course or share the curriculum including number of classes in the
semester, age of the students, religious identification of the students, etc.
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