At a time when neo-Nazi and hate groups are targeting young people with Holocaust denial and other false historical narratives, ADL Philadelphia’s 12th Annual Youth Leadership Conference on December 4, 2018 offered nearly 500 area high-school students and educators a rare opportunity to hear from an eyewitness and survivor of the Holocaust: Charles Middleberg.
The conference, held at the Pennsylvania Convention Center, is a program that ADL has held annually since 2006. It brings together students and teachers from high schools throughout the Pennsylvania-New Jersey-Delaware region.
Over the years, many Holocaust survivors living in the region have visited area schools to share their stories. But as the population of survivors ages, fewer and fewer high-school students have had the chance to meet them in person, hear their stories and ask questions. ADL’s goal for this year’s Youth Conference was to give area students a powerful learning experience and tools to combat the false historical narratives of hate groups, not just around the Holocaust but also around other issues of hate in our time.
“Time and again, we’ve seen that when young people first encounter the invented histories of hate groups, they don’t know what to make of them,” says Randi Boyette, ADL Senior Associate Regional Director, Education. “They think the lies might actually have some truth to them. We’ve found that one of the most powerful ways to inoculate people from the lies of Holocaust deniers is by providing eyewitness testimony from people who personally experienced these horrors. The Youth Conference offers a rare opportunity to reach hundreds of students and educators with this message.”
In 1940, Middleberg was a Jewish child of nine, born in Poland and living in Paris, when German Nazis occupied France and began a systematic campaign to persecute and ultimately murder the Jews under their control. As a youth, he lived on the streets while his mother made plans for the French Resistance to take her children to safety. Ultimately he was taken in by a Catholic woman and her family, and survived the war by “hiding in plain sight” as a Catholic child. Most members of his large extended family, including his mother, were murdered in Nazi death camps.
Before hearing Middleberg’s story, students and educators from different schools met in small groups to explore ways to challenge bias, prejudice, name-calling and bullying in their own school communities.
“Our number-one goal is to inspire people to become allies rather than silent bystanders,” says Boyette. “During the Holocaust, Charles Middleberg’s life was saved by people who actively chose to help, even at the risk of their own lives. And although we are living in different times, we do believe that his testimony will encourage students and educators to act as allies to those who are being targeted in their own schools and communities.”
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The Anti-Defamation League was founded in 1913 to stop the defamation of the Jewish people and to secure justice and fair treatment for all. Today, it is the world’s leading organization combating anti-Semitism and all forms of discrimination, exposing hate groups, training law enforcement on hate crimes and extremism, developing implicit bias curricula for students and educators, countering cyber-hate and bullying, and relentlessly pursuing equal rights for all.