Recently, I was reminded of a statement about the power of human compassion made by the Rev. Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr.: “We will wear them down with our capacity for love.”

This reminder came during the 29th annual Colloquium hosted by the Holocaust, Genocide, and Human Rights Education Center at Brookdale Community College, Lincroft section of Middletown. All the eighth-graders of Memorial Middle School here in Spotswood, along with hundreds of other students from around New Jersey, were the guests of the center and its sponsors for a “game-changing” event in their education.

Students heard the words of Dr. Leon Bass, a liberator of the Buchenwald concentration camp, and of two of the then-young men he freed from the degradation of the Holocaust. Their presentations were honest, genuine and heartfelt, especially since the audience, made up mostly of teenagers, related to the stories of the adolescent boys who “kept their humanity” by retaining their friendship.

Dr. Bass encouraged us educators, supporters and parents in the audience to “teach our children to love, or we will repeat the past,” as he recounted some of his own experiences as an African-American citizen and soldier during World War II. He described his lifelong feeling of “not being good enough,” even as he was dressed in the uniform of his country and putting his own life in jeopardy. Additionally, Lt. Gov. Kim Guadagno, who introduced the speakers, let the students know that “there is never a wrong time to begin to do the right thing.”

Following the opening addresses, students attended a variety of workshops designed to increase their awareness of the fragility of the civil rights of many people in our country and around the world. Our Spotswood students conversed with a Holocaust survivor. When she showed us the number tattooed on her arm, the sight was breathtaking. Then a student asked, “What would you say to Hitler if you saw him today?” She said that she would just simply say, “I have children and grandchildren, so you didn’t succeed in trying to kill us.”

Another student noted that a survivor recalled the compassion of her work supervisor who helped her to escape to his own home. “Without that man,” said the student, “she probably wouldn’t be living today, able to tell us her story. Helping people from the kindness of your own heart and not for a reward is what I learned from this.”

After a workshop based on the artwork produced by the survivors of the genocide, a Spotswood student commented, “I was impressed during my workshop with the drawings from the children of Darfur. It is a shame that those children drew such violent and cruel things because that was what was going on.” Finally, and most significantly, a student wrote, “In the past, I read the stories, but they didn’t seem real to me. However, after seeing these people and hearing their stories, I could put myself in their shoes.”

Thank you, Dale Daniels and everyone else at the Holocaust Centerwhomade this day happen for the Spotswood students and for the many others who were elevated by the courage of the survivors and storytellers.

Thank you, also, to our students who were willing to listen and who increased their capacity to show compassion for others. This colloquium represented yet another affirmation of the importance of education and the role of all of us in it. The students from Spotswood were part of a greater human community that shone a light on these images of loss and hope so that we could all learn from them.
Maureen McVeigh-Berzok
District Supervisor
Language Arts and World
Languages
Spotswood Public Schools