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A little more than seventy-five years after the end of World War II, the number of living Holocaust survivors is naturally diminishing. Their stories are being recorded by museums and other institutions committed to remembering a particularly sordid chapter in history. “Why remember such heinous atrocities?” we might well ask. However, the fact remains that failure to learn the lessons of history often results in repeating the same mistakes. Attempting to deny unpleasant or even abhorrent episodes in the lives of individuals or the history of nations does not remove the consequences of those painful periods. In fact, bulldozing the ruins of concentration camps or erasing facts we prefer not to confront serves only to short-circuit personal development and the maturing of our national ethos. In remembering the Holocaust, we often associate the term hero with rescuers and liberators who defied all odds to assist those who were persecuted and tortured by the Nazis. Those individuals were certainly heroic, as it took obedience (in some cases to military commands) and tremendous personal courage to undertake the right course of action in defiance of the Nazi regime.

A Bay City Junior High language arts teacher took a trip of a lifetime this summer as a participant in the Holocaust studies program sponsored by the Jewish Labor Committee.…