06/12/2025
HAC 8th Graders Help to Preserve Holocaust History as First Ohio School in Program
Reuven Dessler, an eighth-grade student at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland, asks second-generation Holocaust survivor Moshe Neuman questions about his family's experience during the Holocaust. CJN Photo / Kirsten Beard
Article reprinted with permission from Cleveland Jewish News
by Kirsten Beard
The Hebrew Academy of Cleveland is preserving Holocaust memory through a powerful new educational initiative. As part of the nationwide “Names, Not Numbers” program, eighth-grade boys at the academy spent a semester learning about the Holocaust and interviewing second-generation survivors to produce a documentary that will debut for the community June 16 at the academy.
“Names, Not Numbers” is a trademarked oral history film project and curriculum that was created by award-winning educator Tova Fish-Rosenberg, according to its website. In a traditional middle school and high school classroom, students learn about the Holocaust through reading books, listening to lectures, or watching documentary footage of individuals they will never meet. However, this curriculum transforms traditional history lessons into an interactive and nontraditional program that involves individuals who have actually lived through the history being taught, according to the website. The Hebrew Academy of Cleveland is the first school in Ohio to participate.
Led by Yoel Schwartz, principal of general studies at the Hebrew Academy of Cleveland focusing on grades one through eight, the elective class brought together nine eighth-grade boys to explore Holocaust history and conduct interviews with local second-generation survivors. The final product will be a short documentary “that we can have for all time of what the survivors’ children have told us and put it with our learning,” Schwartz told the Cleveland Jewish News.
“No one was forced to learn about it if they didn’t want to, and the parents had to give permission that their children were mature enough to handle it, and that they wanted it,” he said.
During the semester, students have been learning about the historical backgrounds, particularly those related to Holocaust experiences, Schwartz said. They have focused on specific topics, including displaced persons camps and Auschwitz. The topics were influenced by personal stories from those they would interview for the documentary, he said.
The students were also taught lessons on researching, public speaking, video editing and working with recording equipment to make the documentary with the help of Michael Puro, a filmmaker and film instructor. The aim was is to prepare students for thoughtful discussions and challenging questions, Schwartz said.
Cleveland Jewish News Editor Bob Jacob taught the nine students interviewing skills – how to come up with questions and to construct more open-ended ones.
“The goal is to learn the story and to be engaged in the process,” Schwartz said. “And then the other parts are just how to build engagement.”
Since arriving at HAC to work with younger students, Schwartz said he was looking for a way to help students connect with the Holocaust appropriately.
“... We just decided to make a class on really understanding some of the history of what happened,” Schwartz said. “And ‘Names Not Numbers’ has been around for, I want to say, more than two decades. So we just connected to them because we thought they could help us really with the project.”
The school hasn’t done a project like this before, Schwartz added.
Rabbi Simcha Dessler, menahel/educational director of Hebrew Academy, told the CJN the program was the “natural next step.” He said the individuals who founded the academy survived the war. Among those was his father, who came to Cleveland in 1940 from Lithuania through Siberia and Japan.
“The academy was founded on the ashes of the Holocaust at a time of confusion and a time that few believed that the dream could transform into reality – the dream of Jewish survival,” Dessler said.
Over the years, the academy established a memorial program to remember the world as it was and inculcate within a new generation of students an appreciation for the world as it was and Holocaust education, Dessler said. There was also a Torah dedicated at the academy in memory of the million and a half children who perished in the Holocaust, he added. “For us, this is a natural next step involving a new generation of children,” Dessler said.
There have been many survivors who have told their story at the academy, but as this is not a “realistic opportunity at this time,” second-generation survivors will now have the chance to speak, Dessler said.
“The two candidates that were chosen as second-generation survivor interviewees are actually Hebrew Academy of Cleveland board members,” he said. “And (they have) children and grandchildren here. They’re academy life members who themselves have contributed much to Jewish continuity. ... And they each have a great story.”
There was a time when the survivors weren’t sure if there would be future generations for them, Dessler said. So having the second-generation survivors speak is an “incredible opportunity,” he said.
One of the second-generation survivors interviewed for the documentary, Moshe Neuman, told the CJN he wished there was more interest in learning about the Holocaust and its impact.
For the documentary, Neuman talked about his family’s life before, during and after World War II.
“I find that the first generation of survivors wanted to know a lot more,” Neuman, a Beachwood resident, said. “We needed to connect. The next generation doesn’t have the same desire. In fact, it’s sad to say that they have even less interest in it than we do.”
Being a second-generation survivor, Neuman said he had a desire to fill this gap in history for him. He added the first time he went to Israel, the history “became alive.”
“I didn’t know my grandparents,” he said. “I didn’t know anything about them. I needed to go back. I needed to find where they lived. ... I needed to fill that gap.”
Newman still continues to travel in Israel – looking to fill the gaps in his family’s history.
“I found that my great-great-grandmother had children and they lived in different cities,” he said. “I’m touring cemeteries or in and around areas seeing if I can find a tombstone of a relative.”
Neuman said being a part of this documentary gives him “a sense of completion and fulfillment” as it continues and perpetuates his personal goal of keeping the message of the Holocaust alive.
“I realize that as time goes on, it gets thinner and weaker,” Neuman said. “But the more we do, the more we won’t forget. ... They’ve burned documents. They’ve burned books. They’ve burned everything. They’ve destroyed what they could. But the little bit that was shared with us, if we can bring it back alive, that means a lot to me.”
As for what Neuman hopes to see come from his family’s story and the final product of the documentary, the answer can be taken “in many different ways,” and it can “go down many different paths.”
“There’s no one single answer,” Neuman said. “... The biggest answer is that we’ve endured a lot. We were virtually almost annihilated, to the point that there was a very small percentage left. There were six million that (were) taken out of the loop. But the resilience of a Jewish neshama, the resilience of a Jewish person – that wants to perpetuate. We can never be eliminated.”
Throughout the history of Judaism, people have tried to “eliminate” the Jewish people, but that they will “never be successful,” Newman said.
“Our purpose is to serve G-d ... and we’ll do whatever we can to perpetuate that connection,” he said. “And that purpose of being a true servant to Yiddishkeit, and even to one another, is extremely important.”
Schwartz said he hopes to see this elective continue to be a part of the curriculum in the future years.
“I think the curriculum could always use enhancement,” he said. “But, I mean, if the kids are excited about it and the community is excited about it, then why not give them a meaningful experience?”
To date, over 8,000 students in grades eight and 12 in cities across the U.S., Canada and Israel have interviewed and videotaped over 5,000 survivors and World War II veterans through the “Names, Not Numbers” curriculum and project, according to its website.
