Educator Support

Volunteers trained in the field of Holocaust education work to ensure that Holocaust educators in Delaware have the tools and skills they need to provide students with thought-provoking and relevant learning experiences.

Teacher Development
With approval from the Delaware Department of Education and in cooperation with the Brandywine School District, the Holocaust Education Committee offers “The Holocaust: Lessons Learned” workshop.  It consists of study sessions, a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, lesson plan presentations, and portfolio evaluations.  History, geography, literature, film, and politics relating to the Holocaust are studied, as well as presentation methods through an inter-disciplinary approach.

For more information about this year’s workshop click here www.holocausteducatorsworkshop.com

Kerr Education Grant Application
Sponsored by the Borgenicht Foundation
Educators currently teaching grades 7-12 in the Delaware area are invited to apply for one-time Holocaust studies grants in support of work in the classroom. Grants range from $500. to $5,000. All disciplines are welcome to apply; preference may be given to teachers in Language Arts/English and Social Studies/History.  
Applications are due June 15, September 15 and December 15, 2011.

Holocaust Education Resources
Through a partnership with New Castle County, Holocaust education resources are accessible from all public libraries in the state.  These books, periodicals, and audiovisual materials about the Holocaust are housed at the Preston Holocaust Collection at the New Castle County Brandywine Hundred Library on Foulk Road in Wilmington.

Names Recovery Project
The Names Recovery Project in Delaware is part of a global effort, sponsored by Yad Vashem, to name the 6 million souls lost to the Shoah.  This effort was launched in September 2011 and will help Delaware and area families name those who perished in the Holocaust.  David Meluskey, an intern with the committee and a University of Delaware student, will be available to come speak at any occasion at your synagogue, organization or group, as well as be present at any community events.

Please participate in The Names Recovery Project.  Help build community, counter Holocaust deniers, and perform the mitzvah of remembering our ancestors.  For more information, please contact David Meluskey at DENamesRecovery@gmail.com 
Remembrance Form: http://www1.yadvashem.org/yv/en/remembrance/names/pdf/pot_english_a4.pdf
Central Database Site: http://www.yadvashem.org/wps/portal/IY_HON_Welcome

Speakers Bureau
Schools and community groups can learn through vivid recollections of men and women who witnessed the Holocaust.  The Speakers Bureau includes Holocaust survivors, their children, concentration camp liberators, and local Holocaust educators.

No Denying: Delawareans Bear Witness to the Holocaust - A compelling five-part film featuring the testimony of Delawareans who were eyewitnesses to the events of the Holocaust, this documentary consists of five digital video discs and a companion guide.  It highlights the experiences of survivors, righteous gentiles, hidden children, and liberators.  Public, private, and parochial schools and libraries throughout Delaware will receive the five disc DVD set and guide. 

To order the DVD online - click here.

To print an order form and mail - click here.

To view clips from the DVD click here.

For additional information, please contact nodenying1@aol.com.

Holocaust Testimonies
Full-length testimonial videos, produced with the assistance of WHYY-TV 12, are part of the collection of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University.  Copies are also available to scholars for research purposes only at the Special Collections Department, University of Delaware Library, in Newark and at the New Castle County Brandywine Hundred Library.

Halina Wind Preston Memorial Lecture on the Holocaust
Since 1990, the Preston Memorial Lecture series has brought outstanding Holocaust scholars and survivors to speak in Delaware to help carry on the educational mission of Halina Wind Preston (1921-82). A survivor of 14 months in the sewers of Nazi-occupied Lwow, Poland (now Lviv, Ukraine), she became a Jewish educator and an eloquent spokeswoman for the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. The bi-annual lecture is endowed by her family.

Kerr Book Fund
The Kerr Book Fund promotes knowledge of the Holocaust and better understanding between Christians and Jews.  Selected titles are available at the New Castle County Brandywine Hundred Library.

Your support is vital in ensuring that Delaware citizens continue to be educated about the Holocaust. For the first time in its 30-year history, the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Center seeks community support through a perpetual endowment. This Endowment Fund is exclusively earmarked for Holocaust education. Projects your endowment gift will support:

• Holocaust education teacher training and workshops
• Delaware Holocaust education curriculum development for 5th - 12th grades
• Guided trips for Delaware clergy, teachers, law enforcement, and elected officials to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum
• State-wide screenings of the No Denying: Delawareans Bear Witness to the Holocaust documentary
• New publications and films for the Resource Collection at the New Castle County Brandywine Hundred Library
• Educational programs and  maintenance for the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles
• Ongoing recording of eyewitness testimonies
• “Second Generation” speaker training and presentation development
• Local implementation of Yad Vashem Names Recovery Project

For further information, please contact:

Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Center
c/o Jewish Federation of Delaware
101 Garden of Eden Road
Wilmington, DE 19803
(302) 427-2100 x 20
Gina@ShalomDel.org

Click Here - to donate to the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee

THE MISSION of the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Center
is to educate the community on the causes and events of the Holocaust so that its lessons may prevent such a tragedy from happening again.

In May 1978, Halina Wind Preston and Dorothy Finger organized the Holocaust Education Committee.  Both Polish Jews who had survived the Nazi Holocaust, they met in Wilmington, where they raised families in freedom. Upon Preston’s death, the Holocaust Education Committee was named in her memory, and the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Center was created to teach current and future generations about the Holocaust.

The Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Committee is an interfaith volunteer group comprised of Holocaust survivors and their families, Holocaust scholars, teachers, clergy, and community advocates.  Committee members are responsible for the development and implementation of programs for the Halina Wind Preston Holocaust Education Center.  Support from the Jewish Federation of Delaware and the Bernard and Ruth Siegel Jewish Community Center in Wilmington, along with various grants and individual contributions, fund this work.

REMEMBRANCE
Garden of the Righteous Gentiles
The first of its kind in the United States, the Garden of the Righteous Gentiles honors non-Jews who placed their own lives and those of their families in jeopardy to save Jews during the Holocaust. Those remembered in the Garden are gentile rescuers of Jews who eventually settled in Delaware.  The Garden, located at the Bernard and Ruth Siegel Jewish Community Center in Wilmington, is open to the public.  Programs and self-guided tours for students and adults are available upon request.

Yom Hashoah - Day of Remembrance
Each spring the Wilmington community, like other communities around the world, gathers  to remember the victims of the Holocaust.  The public commemoration is held near Freedom Plaza in Wilmington, site of the Holocaust Memorial created by Elbert Weinberg.  Speakers and attendees reflect on the millions killed by the Nazis between 1933 and 1945.  It is also a time to invoke acceptance for all peoples and pledge vigilance against hatred and discrimination.

Children’s  Memorial
Located near the entrance to the Bernard and Ruth Siegel Jewish Community Center in Wilmington, this sculpture by Israeli artist Aharon Bezalel is dedicated to the memory of more than 1.5 million children who perished during the Holocaust.

If we accept the premise that had Hitler won the war all of civilization would have crumbled, then it follows that everyone is a survivor. And it behooves all of us to view and review the Holocaust as the catalyst it must become toward a better and more humane world.

- Halina Wind Preston (1921-1982)
Dedication address at Holocaust Memorial, Freedom Plaza, Wilmington, Delaware - December 2, 1979