Students remember Holocaust through Museum tour

At 5 a.m. on Saturday, September 20, 2008, students, faculty and friends from Seton Hill University (SHU) boarded a bus to take a day trip to Washington DC.

Among those in the full bus, were 17 individuals planning on taking a tour to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is, as stated on it’s website to be     “America's national institution for the documentation, study, and interpretation of Holocaust history,” (www.ushmm.org).

SHU students were encouraged to attend the museum tour through classes, peers that had been there before and because of family history.

Kevin Hinton, a senior, decided to go because in his senior seminar class they discussed the Holocaust and he wanted a way to get closer to the subject matter; while Leara Glinzak, a freshman, was told that going to the museum would be a good learning experience. “I decided to attend the Holocaust museum tour because I have never gone before and I had heard it was a phenomenal museum that you can really relate to and it would be an enjoyable learning experience,” said Glinzak.

While still others, like freshman Caitlin Sheptock, went because part of her family history was surrounded by the Holocaust.  “I wanted to go on the tour because I am Polish and a lot of my family was affected by what happened in the Holocaust,” said Sheptock. 

The students were led through the museum by Gene Forish, who is working to gain his Certificate in Pastoral Ministry and is doing his Field Work/Ministry in Practicum at NCCHE.

Exhibit in the Museum of pictures from the Holocaust. 

Though like any museum tour, the students did not only see a lot, they learned more than they ever could through a textbook during their time in the Holocaust museum.

“I learned more about what was done to people more graphically, I saw items that were found, and events such as Kristallnacht,” said Glinzak.

“The effects it had on the economy and the psychiatric health of the people that were affected by the Holocaust is what I really learned and I saw that my last name was on the glass wall of remembrance, which really hit me while I was there, because I’ve never been shown something like that before,” said Sheptock.

The Holocaust was the state-sponsored, systematic persecution and extermination of European Jews by Nazi Germany between 1933 and 1945. Though Jews were the primary victims, six million of whom were murdered, Gypsies, the handicapped and Poles were also targeted, as well as millions of homosexuals, Jehovah's Witnesses, Soviet prisoners of war and political rebels, were made to suffer horrible deaths.

 “At the museum, I learned how the Holocaust affected many different people and how some people tried to help everyone they knew,” said Hinton.

“The most moving part was when I read about the children that were mentally and physically disabled and saw pictures of the children before they were tortured,” said Glinzak, “reading about them and their execution and being so young while going through all of these events seemed unrealistic.”

As the students left the museum and later left DC, they did not leave what they had learned behind them, now carrying what they saw and read about with them, they are able to not only remember what happened, but also tell others about their experiences.

“Knowing that my family was involved and not just my family but other people’s  families 

were affected as well and that some people still think that what happened during the Holocaust was all made up and that it wasn’t real really effected me,” said Sheptock, “it’s real, it happened, we have to remember that.”