In recognition of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, Canyon Crest Academy’s Jewish Culture Club sponsored a presentation on Jan. 25 by Ben Schindler, son of Holocaust survivors Max and Rose Schindler.
Although Rose Schindler died last year, she was there too – telling her story through an interactive hologram that felt as real as if she’d been there personally.
International Holocaust Remembrance Day, established to honor and victims and survivors of the Holocaust, was proclaimed in 2005 by the United Nations General Assembly. The date chosen – Jan. 27 – marks the liberation of the infamous Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp by Soviet troops in 1945.
During the Holocaust, the Nazis murdered six million Jews, as well as other populations considered by Nazi leaders to be “sub-human.” Two-thirds of Europe’s Jewish population perished in the Holocaust.
At San Dieguito Union High School District’s Canyon Crest Academy, which serves about 2,160 students in grades nine through 12, Ben Schindler told the story of his parents’ lives and their horrific experiences in the Holocaust.
CCA Principal Brett Killeen said students were given the opportunity to attend one of two of Schindler’s presentations, both of which were held in the school’s 400-capacity theater. He said each session was full.
Students were silent and attentive as Ben Schindler told his story.
Max and Rose Schindler were both born in 1929, Rose a country girl from Czechoslovakia and Max a city boy from . As the Nazis rose to power, both became victims of growing anti-Jewish laws and actions.
Schindler said his mother at age 14 was rounded up and crowded into a train car for two days without food, water or toilets. Lying that she was 18 and not 14 saved her from the gas chambers upon arrival at Auschwitz.
He called Auschwitz a machine of murder. “The purpose of the camp was to kill people and burn their bodies,” he said, describing the gas chambers attached to seven crematoria.
Schindler spoke of the brutality and inhumanity people suffered in the extermination camps and how both his parents somehow managed to have the strength of will to survive.
He said Rose’s father told his daughter, “Stay alive so you can tell the world what they are doing to us.”
The United States entered the war only after the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, and the Germans were at last defeated in 1945.
“Imagine if we hadn’t been bombed at Pearl Harbor, the world would look very different,” Schindler said.
After liberation, Max and Rose found themselves in England, meeting in 1947. They married in 1950 and eventually came to live in San Diego.
Voice from the past
For 27 years after the camps, Rose did not share her pain. But when she was asked by her son Steve’s middle school teacher if she would tell her story, she realized there is value in sharing.
“She began speaking her story in 1972 and did not stop until three weeks before her death,” Ben told me in writing.
Her last talk was at the University of California San Diego on Jan. 26, 2023. She died three weeks later, on Feb. 17, at age 93. Max Schindler died in 2017.
Before both parents died, they attended the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz in 2015, in Krakow, Poland, with 100 other Holocaust survivors.
Ben said he will continue her mission to speak to students and educate them about the Holocaust and will “keep going as long as there is interest.”
As compelling as Ben Schindler’s story is, seeing and hearing Rose Schindler speak and answer questions through her hologram was even more gripping. Astonishing, actually.
This link connects to Rose Schindler’s holographic image and allows the viewer to pose questions. Because she answers in her own voice and the viewer sees her speaking, it’s as if she’s really there.
Ben said his mother was interviewed and filmed for four days, eight hours each day, answering more than 800 questions.
“It’s powerful that they had the foresight to create this to keep Rose’s story and legacy alive,” said CCA’s Killeen.
She said in the hologram that she relates what happened, as painful and terrible as it was, mostly to students and young people, “so it shouldn’t happen again.”
“They learn a lot,” she said.
After nearly three decades of silence, Rose found the strength to tell her story, saying, “That’s when I started talking and it has not stopped since.”
That’s 50 years the San Diego community has had the profound privilege of hearing her speak.
About the ability to endure such unimaginable evil, she said, “It’s unbelievable how you can survive conditions like that.”
Pictures of the barracks of concentration camps show emaciated prisoners with nothing but skin and bones. Ben said his father, who was five feet eight inches, weighed less than 70 pounds when liberated.
In a book titled Two Who Survived, author M. Lee Connolly interviewed the Schindlers and was able to weave together the story of their lives that Ben said reflects who they were, where they came from and how they were able to move on after such abominable experiences and create a family of their own.
Connolly said Rose “knew how to tell a horrific story without it being so horrible,” when speaking to younger students.
In addition to the book, Rose Schindler also has a YouTube site.
The club
The mission of CCA’s Jewish Culture Club is “to bring together CCA’s Jewish community in a fun, safe way; however, every student is welcome. Our goals are to educate students about Jewish culture, which includes holidays, history, music, food and more.”
The club has 15 to 25 regular , one of the club’s three co-presidents said.
After Ben Schindler’s talks concluded, students during their homeroom period were able to watch a PowerPoint presentation created by CCA’s Jewish Culture Club.
“We worked closely with Garry Thornton, Shay Marcon, and istration to commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day,” said one of the club’s presidents.
Garry Thornton is CCA Assistant Principal, and Shay Marcon is a CCA counselor.
The club worked on the video for three months, with filming and editing help from CCA’s cinema conservatory.
The club’s presentation featured background and historical facts about the Holocaust, as well as video stories from Jewish students who spoke of their personal family connections to the Holocaust.
Students were also able to paint ceramic butterflies, each one representing one of the 1.5 million children who died in the Holocaust.
The Butterfly Project, founded in San Diego in 2006, focuses on education and social justice through the arts. The butterflies are displayed as symbols of resilience and hope.
Canyon Crest Academy is one of many schools throughout the world with a butterfly display on its campus, which Killeen said serves as “a reminder for us to do the right thing, learn from history, and not allow something like this to happen again.”
Antisemitism
According to the Anti-Defamation League, polls show that few young people are knowledgeable about Jews and the Holocaust, and research shows that belief in antisemitic tropes is strongly connected to that lack of knowledge.
Since the Oct. 7 attack on Israel, the local ADL reported that the San Diego region has seen a 150% increase in antisemitic incidents and ADL data nationwide has shown a 360% increase, compared to the same period of time last year.
The resurgence of antisemitism underscores the importance of teaching what can happen when fanatical racism and bigotry lead to the dehumanization of others.
What was happening during the Holocaust was known, but as Rose said, “The whole world was silent.”
“Rose Schindler has spoken to our students a number of times, and we are grateful her historical story continues through her son and her hologram so that we can honor her message of standing up to hate,” Killeen said.
“I’m grateful every day here at CCA and in our district that our young people care about making a positive difference in our world.”
Canyon Crest Academy deserves recognition and praise for bringing this important program to its campus. Efforts to inform students of the horrors of the past and familiarize them about such unspeakable crimes against humanity can help guide them as they become the next generation of leaders.
The hologram
According to information on how Rose Schindler’s hologram was created, Heather Maio-Smith began creating an exhibit on intergenerational testimony with Holocaust survivors in 2010 and realized that future generations would never have the chance to talk to survivors personally.
After creating a 3D prototype, she brought the project to University of Southern California’s Shoah Foundation and the USC Institute for Creative Technologies and ultimately formed a partnership to secure the interactive interview methodology.
Intending to use the interactive concept she had created to preserve the stories of humanity for future generations, StoryFile was launched in 2017 “to create a cloud-based, no-code, automatic platform that would bring the power of conversational video into everyone’s hands.”
StoryFile’s conversational video uses artificial intelligence to help the process of matching and retrieving video content.
Resources for educators
To schedule Ben Schindler for his forceful presentation of his parents’ lives and for a visit with his mother Rose’s hologram, him at: [email protected].
San Diego’s Jewish Federation offers numerous educator tools, including a free classroom resource guide for Holocaust education as well as a speakers bureau.
As stated on the federation’s website, “We are proud to present a comprehensive website developed to educators, students, community and Holocaust survivors.”Another option among many is the Facing History curriculum which was first created by renowned educator Margot Stern Strom who died last year.
According to her obituary, Margot Stern Strom was a teacher “who in the mid-1970s turned her dismay over her lack of knowledge about the Holocaust into a nonprofit educational organization that develops anti-hate curricula” for schools and students.
The first Facing History courses were taught in 1976 using draft lessons piloted in her classroom, according to the Facing History website. These lessons became the seminal text, Holocaust and Human Behavior, which is still a key component of Facing History’s curricular offerings.
Over the years, Facing History brought survivors of the Holocaust – as well as other survivors with their s of genocide in such places as Armenia, Rwanda and Cambodia – into hundreds of classrooms to share their crucial memories with thousands of students across the United States and around the world.
Opinion columnist and education writer Marsha Sutton can be reached at [email protected].
