Bill would require education on Holocaust in every Nebraska school

LINCOLN, Neb. (KLKN) – Right now, every Nebraska school district makes its own decision on whether it teaches students about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide.

But a proposed bill would require schools to teach it.

There were over 40,000 concentration camps and ghettos during the Holocaust, but according to a nationwide survey, nearly 50% of millennials cannot name a single one.

The lack of Holocaust knowledge is disturbing to many, especially to one Nebraska man.

Ari Kohen of Omaha grew up listening to his grandparents’ story of survival.

Zoli and Sheri Kohen were both deported from their homes in Romania and Czechoslovakia to Auschwitz concentration camp at the ages of 19 and 20. Ari’s grandparents, who didn’t know each other at the time, lost their mothers, fathers, siblings, and many of their friends almost immediately when they arrived at the camp.

It’s their stories of loss, pain and strength that are forever engraved in Ari’s mind.

“One of the things that always stands out to me is as much as they’re willing to talk about the experience that they had in the camps because it ultimately turned out to be a story of survival, it’s very difficult for them to talk about their family members, still,” Ari said.

After the war, his grandparents met as refugees fleeing for a new start. They met somewhere in Europe in transit, got married in Cypress and started a family in Israel, later leading them to America in 1960.

Ari remembers in great detail learning about the Holocaust in school, but that’s not the case in every classroom anymore. As time goes on, the stories are fading.  Nearly two-thirds of U.S. young adults don’t know that 6 million Jews were killed in the Holocaust.

But a Nebraska state senator is looking to change that.

LB 888, introduced by Sen. Jen Day of Gretna, would require every Nebraska public school to teach about the Holocaust and other acts of genocide to make sure history is never forgotten.

Kohen backs this bill and testified in support of the bill at its hearing on behalf of his grandparents and in his position on the board for the Institute for Holocaust Education in Omaha. He says teaching kids and keeping the Holocaust in textbooks is not only a way to honor his grandparents.

“I really learned a lot from them about the idea of how you treat other people and more broadly about the concept of human rights,” he said.

But there are also lessons to be learned here beyond what happened at what particular time.

“Learning about the Holocaust, especially with the kinds of advanced curriculum materials that we have today, can do a lot to teach students about empathy for others,” he said. “It steers people away from bigotry and xenophobia. It can even be used as a kind of antibullying or up-standard curriculum.”

Kohen said this education is crucial, especially at a time when we’re seeing rising antisemitism across the country.

Kohen’s grandfather died in 2013, but his grandmother is still going strong at the age of 96.

LB 888 is moving quickly through the Legislature with little to no opposition. There’s no word yet on when it will be debated on the floor.