Ethel Katz, a Holocaust survivor, talked to eighth-graders at South Woods Middle School in the Syosset Central School District in May about her personal experience of survival, which has been documented in her memoir, Our Tomorrows Never Came.
Katz gave her testimony about living in Buczacs, Poland, which is now part of the Ukraine, when the German Army entered town in 1941. Soon after their arrival, mobile killing squads murdered her twin brother and other young Jewish men in the forest outside of the town. The remaining members of her family hid in barns and fields for several years, relying on non-Jewish neighbors for food.
They were later found and murdered in their hiding places, with Katz narrowly escaping. She survived the last months of the war on her own.
The eighth-graders have been studying World War II in both social studies and English. In social studies, students have been learning about the events of the war and the effects it had on many countries. In English, students have been engaging with their peers in World War II literature circles.
Many of the novels they are reading tell the experience of the traumatic events of the Holocaust. During their trip to Washington, D.C. in March, students toured the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. Katz’s testimony provided students with a significant and memorable learning experience by bringing what they were learning about in the classroom to life.
