History Lesson: Congregation Emanuel president teaches ARS students about Holocaust

Posted on by Mike Fuhrman
Beverly Maurice, an educator with the N.C. Holocaust Council, spoke to American Renaissance School students on Friday about the Holocaust.

BY KARISSA MILLER

Some lessons transcend the history books.

On Friday morning, Beverly Maurice, president of Congregation Emanuel and an educator with the N.C. Holocaust Council, told American Renaissance Middle School eighth-graders about the horrors of the Holocaust and incredible stories of survival. Maurice, who is Jewish, said she has late distant cousins who were Holocaust survivors.

The Holocaust was the systematic persecution and murder of around 6 million Jews between 1933 and 1945 by the German Nazi regime.

In the years leading up to the Holocaust, Adolf Hitler built public policies around the concept of eugenics, based on the idea that mental illness, physical deformities and other biological traits were passed down from one generation to another. He then created laws to determine who was “defective” and sought to sterilize individuals to prevent the birth of what he considered genetically inferior children.

All children under the age of three who had illnesses or a genetic condition such as Down’s syndrome, or cerebral palsy were targeted under the “euthanasia” T4 program.

“They took children under the age of three. This could have been you guys or your little brother or sister (with conditions) such as, epilepsy, deafness or blindness. They said they would take your family (member) for treatment,” Maurice explained.

“But they never brought them back. They would say, ‘Your brother or sister died of pneumonia,’ ” she told the students.

Maurice told them about the late Howard Adler, a survivor of Nazi Germany during Hitler’s rise to power, who lived in Statesville.

She also shared the story of Zev Harel, who survived the concentration camps, and the young African American soldier who saved his life.

Lastly, she spoke of Margot Lobree, 97, a Kindertransport Holocaust survivor who lives in Winston-Salem. In 1939, Lobree’s mother put her on a Kindertransport train to England. She would never see her again. Eventually, she came to America and got married and started her own family. Many years later, she was reunited with her brother.

Maurice said it is important to teach students about the Holocaust and encourage them to stand up against intolerance and discrimination.

“This kind of hatred, bigotry and antisemitism could happen again,” she said. “We should never forget.”