Learning Hate

Learning to Not Repeat a History of Hate

The lesson was on hate, and the juniors at St. Mary’s Ryken High School in Leonardtown were getting an earful.

The students first heard from a history professor who displayed slides of starving children in Jewish ghettos during World War II. Then they watched a documentary that showed rival gang members killing each other in Los Angeles, among other violent images.

And finally the students listened to a Holocaust survivor, a Jewish woman named Charlene Schiff who lives in Alexandria. Schiff, now 68, told the horrendous tale of her childhood under the Nazi regime. She described the year she spent in a ghetto in eastern Poland with her mother, father and older sister before they were killed. She told of escaping to a forest, of hiding alone for almost three years, surviving on worms, insects and grass.

[…]

Students also heard from Leon Bass, now 73, who was one of the American soldiers who helped liberate a concentration camp in eastern Germany.

[…]

Source:

© Copyright 1998 The Washington Post Company
By Beth Berselli
Washington Post
Staff Writer
Thursday, November 5, 1998; Page M03


Webmaster note: Remember Leon Bass? He was featured in the fraudulent PBS special (and later, in the accompanying book) of “Liberators.”