Stones of Remembrance

For the past three years, Kendall O’Connor-Tappan’s eighth-grade English students have read Art Spiegelman's graphic novel, “Maus: A Survivor’s Tale.” Spiegelman, a cartoonist, tells the story of his father, a Polish Jew and Holocaust survivor, through his drawings, representing Jews as mice and Germans as cats. Kendall learned about “Maus” during her first year at Paideia when it was featured on the eighth-grade Reading Bowl list. “I love teaching analysis through art, and I think graphic novels are such a powerful way to teach history and memoir, too,” says Kendall. Seeing the benefits of visual storytelling, seventh-graders in Tony and Kendall’s (ToKen) homebase now read Marjane Satrapi's graphic novel “Persepolis” to support their study of human rights. “Since both texts are pictorial in nature, we have the unique opportunity to reflect on how visual imagery can help preserve memory,” Kendall shares.

This year, students witnessed the importance of imagery in preserving memory as Paideia participated in the Stones of Remembrance Project for the first time. The Stones of Remembrance Project (SoRP), sponsored by the Breman Museum, Eternal-Life Hemshech and the Jewish Federation of Greater Atlanta, memorializes the 1.5 million children who were killed in the Holocaust. Over the last 15 years, 1,600 local students from 25 Atlanta schools have participated in the project. Last spring, the Paideia Jewish Parents (PJP) group introduced the program to Head of School Tom Taylor and Director of Diversity, Equity, Inclusion and Belonging Oman Frame in hopes of Paideia adopting the program. When Kendall learned of the project from PJP, she saw an opportunity to connect it to her curriculum. “Some parents let me know that other Atlanta schools have participated in this program over the years – why not Paideia?” Kendall recalls. “It just so happened that I was gearing up to teach Maus, so everything fell into place.”

 

 

After reading “Maus” and “Persepolis” respectively, the ToKen homebase took a field trip to the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum, a cultural center dedicated to Jewish history, culture and arts. During their museum visit, students were able to study the Holocaust in a more tangible way, connecting artifacts like shoes, suitcases and toys to real people. Paideia parent Joanna Kobylivker also visited the class to share the story of her grandmother, Ella, a Holocaust survivor. Connecting stories of the Holocaust to real people allows students to understand the atrocities of genocide outside of a historical context; it becomes personal. The Stones of Remembrance Project further emphasizes the personhood of each victim of the Holocaust, as students receive a child's name, birthdate, place of birth and place of death. Students are tasked with decorating a stone to create a unique memorial for this child. As students decorated their stones, they reflected on the ages of the children they memorialized – some as young as one year old. “My goal is for students to walk away with a bird's eye view of the colossal devastation that the Holocaust wrought alongside an understanding of individuals whose lives were impacted, such as Vladek and Anja Spiegelman in Maus, or Joanna's extraordinary grandmother, Ella, or the specific child who a student honors through their Stones of Remembrance project.”

Kendall hopes to expand the project beyond her classroom in the coming years, but more importantly she hopes that Paideia students will continue to learn about anti-semitism and other hate-based ideologies. “Studying the Holocaust not only teaches young people about a historical event but also opens up an opportunity to examine misinformation, stereotyping, and scapegoating,” Kendall explains. “One of the best ways to push back against these societal ills is to recognize and honor the humanity that lies in each of us.”