Students become teachers at Holocaust remembrance

When third-grader Andrew McNeal spoke about a Holocaust survivor before a crowd of 2,700 students Tuesday, he didn’t look down at his notes. Andrew, 8, said he knew what he was talking about. He had memorized it.

“All his life he strove ... to help people to understand the incomprehensible -- the Holocaust and the children’s fate,” Andrew said into a microphone standing next to other children, who also read comments about the Holocaust.

The schoolchildren were a part of a youth event at Pan Pacific Park in Los Angeles that recognized Holocaust Remembrance Day, which was commemorated worldwide Sunday. Usually Holocaust events feature politicians and civic leaders, but Tuesday gave about 50 students the chance to teach their peers -- and themselves -- about the perishing of 6 million Jews.

“We can protect the world ... through education,” Jona Goldrich, a Holocaust survivor and chairman of the Los Angeles Holocaust Monument, told the audience. “We hope the education you get will help the world be a better world.”

The student presenters -- ranging from third to 12th grade -- stood under a large tent encircled with flags of Israel. They recited poems, read book excerpts and sang songs, some written by Holocaust survivors. And as organizers had hoped, many in the crowd seemed to perk up after the adult speakers sat down and the students took the microphones.

“I think I can learn better when the kids talk,” said seventh-grader Lizzie Heyman, 12. “It’s like a friend just telling me.... When the adults talk, it’s like I’m getting a lecture.”

Andrew, who attends K. Anthony School in Inglewood, said he prefers to hear schoolchildren teach subject matter because, to him, they convey it more meaningfully and convincingly.

“They speak with excitement,” Andrew said of his peers. Of adults: “It sounds like they just talk for a living. They just talk so we can hear them.”

Many in the audience, which included students from 27 public and private schools, also said they were inspired to see their peers speak about the events surrounding the Holocaust.

Students cheered and clapped as their classmates walked to the front, wearing matching blue and white hats that said, “Lest We Forget.” Eighth-grader Julie Boutros sat a little straighter in her seat as her classmate, Ashley Farmer, defined anti-Semitism.

“I turn on more when it [is] somebody I know,” said Julie, 14, of Luther Burbank Middle School in Burbank.

In preparation of the 90-minute program, all the students learned about the Holocaust for days or weeks. Many teachers use the day as part of their Holocaust history unit.

“I feel like this is a culminating event for the students to experience,” said eighth-grade teacher Suzanne McHorney of Luther Burbank Middle School. “It just makes what’s in writing, what’s in history books come alive for them ....They are living history.”

Teachers also use the annual event to expose their students to various ethnicities and the Jewish culture. The crowd on Tuesday had, among others, Asian, Latino, white and African American students.

Some of the students attend schools that are predominantly one race.

“I like to take them outside our area or community so they can learn more about other people,” said Rosemary Wright, who teaches Andrew’s third-grade class at the Inglewood private school that is predominantly African American.

A moment of silence was also observed in remembrance of the tragedy at Virginia Tech, where a gunman killed 32 people on campus Monday.

Randol Schoenberg, chairman of the Los Angeles Museum of the Holocaust, tried to explain the “enormity of the Holocaust” by comparing the events to Virginia Tech. Schoenberg said the group would have to be silent for “two days to commemorate the same number of people” who died in the Holocaust.

Third-grader Alaiyah Gates said she was saddened during parts of the program, but by the end she was glad she had attended because she learned about a part of history she had not been exposed to. This year’s event focused on the 1.5 million children who were killed during the Holocaust.

“I didn’t know a lot of kids could die in one day ... until I came here,” said Alaiyah, 8, sitting near the stage. “I learned about stuff I didn’t know.”

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angie.green@latimes.com