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RSSTeaneck Suburbanite: Holocaust educators donate library to THS
Mar 18
Holocaust educators donate library to THS
By Howard Prosnit, Teaneck Suburbanite
Thursday, March 18, 2010
On the day after Halloween in 1979, Jeanette Friedman Sieradski was dropping off her children for pre-school at B’Nai Yeshurun when she saw that the synagogue had been defaced with swastikas and anti-Semitic graffiti.
Friedman, whose parents survived Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps, was appalled. But the experience changed her life, marking the beginning of three decades of Holocaust research and education.
Soon after the encounter, Friedman, an Ogden Avenue resident at the time, founded the first Second Generation Group of the children of Holocaust survivors in New Jersey. In 1980, she was appointed by Gov. Thomas Kean to the New Jersey Holocaust Education Commission. Locally, she began working with former Teaneck social studies teacher Ed Reynolds to revise the Holocaust curriculum used in the schools.
At the time, Teaneck schools used the Teaneck-Vineland curriculum, which Friedman found objectionable.
“They were using a Lenny Bruce poem and having kids do role playing games of Gestapo and Judenrat, which was teaching kids to be bullies,” she said. “We wanted the kids to know that the issue was not just about six million Jews who were killed, but about how people treat each other.”
On March 10, what Friedman calls her “31-year journey in Holocaust education” reached a culmination as she and her husband Phillip Sieradski presented the Teaneck Board of Education with their private library of some 300 Holocaust related books and DVDs. The collection will be housed in the high school’s Holocaust Center.
“It is an overwhelming gift,” said Acting Superintendent Spencer Denham.
Dave Bicofsky, the district’s director of School/Community Relations, recalled going to Friedman’s New Milford home with Assistant Superintendent Barbara Pinsak, to arrange for transfer of the gift.
“It is a treasure trove of memorabilia that help keep this topic alive forever,” Bicofsky said.
The collection will be available to Teaneck public and private school students and to the general public.
Many of the books are rare and unusual that the Sieradskis have acquired over the years, including out-of-print memoirs, primary history research texts and transcripts from major conferences.
The Sieradskis obtained much of the collection through their careers as editors and publishers. Their company, The Wordsmithy, has published Holocaust narratives, as well as books of general interest, including math text books and a history of the Haagen-Dazs® ice cream company.
“We edit and help people write their books,” Frideman said. She is assisted by her husband, a decorated Vietnam War veteran with a Ph.D. in educational administration, whom she describes as “the editor’s editor.”
For some of the Holocaust memoirs published by The Wordsmithy, survivors have related the material orally in Yiddish to Friedman, who then translated it into English.
One of The Wordsmithy’s recent endeavors is “Why Should I Care,” a book that Friedman co-authored with David Gold to teach the Holocaust to students from upper middle school through college.
The text is inextricably linked to the Web site: www. whyshouldicareontheweb.com
“We had to make the Holocaust relevant, and we saw the need to use popular culture,” said Friedman, noting that basic values can be taught through readings as diverse as Dumbo the Elephant and the Harry Potter series. “We want the kids to understand that the way they treat each other determines the condition of the planet.”
E-mail: prosnitz@northjersey.com
