Students immersed in Holocaust history

By Cristina Cabrera Jarro -

Photography: CRISTINA CABRERA JARRO | FC

PINECREST | Teaching the Holocaust at the middle school level requires teachers to find creative and innovative ways to engage their students. Like most educators, many are now competing with social media and the internet.

“There is a lot of distortion of the facts, as well as denial. We want to make sure that they get the right information from us,” said English teacher Elcira Gonzalez, who has dedicated nearly three decades to teaching middle school students about the Holocaust.

“It’s not a topic that I just gloss over. It’s not fair and it’s not respectful to the topic. So, I really go in and try to give students as much background as possible. I don’t focus on Hitler. I focus on the people affected and their stories,” she said.

Two years ago, Gonzalez, who teaches at St. Louis Covenant School in Pinecrest, teamed up with Roxanna Saud, the school’s performing arts teacher, to make Holocaust lessons more interdisciplinary. Teachers in other subject areas also grew interested.

“They saw the excitement around studying this, the motivation, and they saw that the kids were thirsty for it,” said Gonzalez.

To add a faith component, the Holocaust unit also incorporated an art installation combined with a prayer ceremony and a student visit to the Holocaust Memorial in Miami Beach, where they met with Holocaust survivors.

This year, through Instagram, Saud discovered the Hate Ends Now Cattle Car exhibit, a nonprofit traveling Holocaust history immersion experience that allowed students to see and feel the history they were studying right from their school parking lot.

“Because the cattle car was coming to us, rather than going to the Holocaust Memorial, we asked the memorial to bring the survivors to us,” Gonzalez explained.

On March 3, 2025, St. Louis Covenant School hosted Holocaust Remembrance Day. A rotating schedule of events allowed students and their teachers to encounter history through several activities, including the Cattle Car Exhibit, conversations with Holocaust survivors Saul Blau and Judy Rodan, a book presentation with author Jeannette Grunhaus Gelman, a second-generation survivor, a Nazi and Holocaust artifact exhibit, and more.

At the Hate Ends Now: Cattle Car Exhibit, a group of students and their teachers entered the cattle car, one similar to those used to transport Jews and other victims to Nazi concentration and death camps across Europe from 1933 to 1942.

Raven McClendon, who works with Hate Ends Now, pointed out, “There are about 30 of you in here right now, and you can sit on the floor if you want to. But can you imagine 100 people, of all ages, packed into this car and transported for days?”

Over 100 footprints stamped on the floor of the car eerily emphasized the reality. The doors of the cattle car were then closed, and a film projected across the walls of the cattle car portrayed testimonies and the experience of being transported to a camp.

“It was a fascinating experience,” said eighth grader Nicholas Mazo. “Being able to be inside of the car, yes, it’s a replica, but being able to visualize where they were was moving.”

Eighth grader Olivia Ainslie observed how classmates, teachers, and other adults were affected.“No matter how you were feeling before, you’re in a little bit of a darker mood when you go out,” she said.

As the day went on, the various activities seemed to spark the curiosity of students.

“It’s important that we learn so we can teach our future children about the Holocaust, about the horrors that happened, so that it’s not lost to history and never repeats itself,” said Nicholas.

Second-generation Holocaust survivor Jeannette Grunhaus Gelman answered the call to share her family’s history with younger generations by writing “On Sunny Days We Sang,” a book about the experiences her Jewish parents faced to survive in Nazi occupied Europe during World War II.

“This became like a life mission for me because I realized that this has to be known, that every survivor has to tell their story so that the world knows what happened during the Holocaust,” she told students in her presentation.

For 70 years, Judy Rodan, a survivor of the Holocaust, did not speak about her experience. Eight years ago, with the encouragement of her daughter, Rodan, now 87 years old, finally shared.

At 6-years-old, Rodan was separated from her family, given a new identity, and hidden in a convent with other children that were cared for by nuns.

“I realized how humane these people were, the nuns, all of them, including the mother superior. They must have known what peril they were in, and yet they kept me there alive and made sure that I was taken care of. This is a big deal. This is a big dedication to humanity,” she said.

Camila Abreu, a fifth grader who heard Rodan’s testimony at St. Louis, felt honored. “We’re mature enough to be here right now to learn, and it was priceless to have heard Judi,” Camila said.

Gonzalez pointed out how connections exist between Catholics and Holocaust history.

“It’s such an opportunity for these kids to see how there’s evil in the world, but at the same time what can we do about it?”

At the interfaith prayer ceremony held later in the day at St. Louis Covenant Church, Father Gabriel Vigues, the pastor, asked that through prayer, action could be taken “to stand together so that light may banish all darkness, love can prevail over hate, and good can triumph over evil.”

At the ceremony, Pinecrest Vice-Mayor Jerry Greenberg presented the school with a proclamation from the mayor’s office for their efforts. Miami-Dade County Mayor Daniella Levine Cava, who also attended the ceremony, commended St. Louis for doing their part in teaching Holocaust history.

“It is so impressive to me that this school has decided to step up and tell the truth about history in a time when not everyone is telling the truth. Unfortunately, the hate is so deep that people want to rewrite history,” she said.

Rabbi Jesse Charyn, invited to the ceremony from the nearby synagogue Bet Shira, told students that, like in the Jewish tradition, they must never forget.

“That is our mitzvah. The obligation that you are doing today, you are remembering,” he said.

He taught them three words in Hebrew: ‘Olam, Tzedek, Nivnah,’ which translated means “We will build this world through justice, through righteousness.”

Julie Perdomo, school principal, hopes that her students help build a better, more tolerant, and loving world.

“I want you to understand the great impact that this should have on your life—not just today, and not just about this one event that was so impactful for so many millions of people—but in every single day of your life,” she said.

She reminded them that even one person can make a difference. “I have close to 200 of you in here, which means there’s a lot of difference to be made.”