Young Leader Reflects on “Truly Touching” ADL Program

  • January 21, 2016

After joining Philadelphia Police recruits at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum for ADL’s Law Enforcement and Society program, an ADL Young Leader wrote the following letter to the supervisory officers of recruit class:

January 21, 2016

Dear Lt. M- and Sgts. C-, F- and L-:

Just a quick note to thank you for allowing me to join you and your recruits at the US Holocaust Memorial Museum yesterday.

As I shared with several of you, this was not my first time at the museum. Throughout my life, I have been to the DC Museum and Yad Vashem (the Holocaust Memorial in Jerusalem) countless times, as well as a trip to Poland where we saw the actual concentration camps and other sites of Nazi atrocities. Without a doubt in my mind, I can tell you that the experience yesterday was the most moving since my trip to Poland in 2004.

Having grown up in the Jewish community, Holocaust education was part of every school curriculum from a young age. Admittedly, I had no idea what to expect prior to yesterday’s trip. I thought that there was nothing new that I could learn or feel from one more trip to the Holocaust museum. During the Reflections portion of the program, I was proven wrong.

When one of the recruits said that the museum was speaking for “the 6,000,000 stories that went untold,” I was truly touched. This was a perspective that I had never thought of, heard or considered previously. I hope that all of the recruits found the experience as meaningful as this individual and I did.

Please extend my best wishes to the recruit classes.

Sincerely,

Adam Klazmer

 

The Anti-Defamation League, founded in 1913, is dedicated to fighting anti-Semitism and all forms of bigotry.