Teaching the Holocaust from a survivor’s perspective is very different than that of an academician’s or historian’s point of view. Nevertheless, it is important that students be exposed to all three viewpoints.Being a survivor who has devoted the past 22 years to sharing my experiences in the Holocaust and its contemporary implications with students of all ages, ethnicity, religion and gender, I learned that what young people are most interested in is knowing the truth. Before I was recruited by the Simon Weisenthal Center to talk about my Holocaust experiences in public I, as most of my survivor friends, never shared their stories with anyone. Even after I agreed to do so, I wondered if I would be able to bare my soul to strangers who probably wouldn’t and couldn’t understand what we really endured. Also, I had doubts as to whether anyone would even be interested enough to listen.

We have come a long way since then. Today, viewing world affairs on television as they are happening makes human connections and awareness much stronger, and the computer brings them much closer. Just recently, children of all ages throughout the world were able to witness the pain and suffering of children in Kosovo as the situation unfolded. Surely, the affect on them was profound.

Understandably, my experiences and observations apply mostly to the United States, and even this varies from state to state, city to city, and even one school to another.The complexity of the Holocaust makes teaching the subject very difficult. It takes a special teacher to influence students in general, but to stimulate the curiosity of a student takes an extraordinary teacher. Of utmost importance is that the teacher be well informed on the subject. I have found that in that regard it helps if the teacher knows and has contact with a survivor. My personal experience is that If a teacher does not prepare the class properly and relies on the survivor’s testimony to be the history lesson as well, I lose part of the audience either in understanding or concentration. On the other hand, when the teacher has prepared the class with the historical and factual tools and invites a survivor to testify, the dynamic is extremely powerful. Of course, some survivors’ stories are more compelling and their presentations vary. While some speakers are able to paint verbal scenes as clear as pictures, others arm themselves with photographs, books or video tapes. Today we have educational tools which can greatly enhance a survivor’s story.

Los Angeles, being at the forefront of Holocaust education, has various training opportunities for teachers. Training opportunities are now available in other cities as well. I am very fortunate to be affiliated with organizations which use state-of-the-art technology. For instance, the Shoah Foundation has videotaped over 50,000 testimonies, not only of Holocaust survivors but also of liberators of concentration camps and rescuers referred to as "righteous gentiles" such as Raoul Wallenberg was.

To understand the human dimensions of the Holocaust we must hear from all the participants. Very recently, a Nazi doctor who worked at Auschwitz was interviewed whose testimony and videotaped confession was invaluable to complete the truth. The Shoah Foundation has conducted interviews with concentration camp survivors in 57 countries and in 32 languages. This information will eventually be available for education everywhere. The foundation has also produced three documentaries which are currently available. The latest is "The Last Days" which deals with the Hungarian deportations. Also, a CD ROM is now in the schools.

The Simon Weisenthal Center.Museum of Tolerance has computers set up that allow school children to access Holocaust information. The most exciting technology that I often participate in is the use of video conferencing which puts a survivor in contact with school children in remote places where survivors are not accessible.

The technology of the new century will bring people of the world even closer. Humanity will need to learn lessons from the twentieth century genocides if it is to avoid such human tragedies in the future.