I recently returned from Washington. D.C. with nine students who participated in the 2022 Together We Remember program.
I was privileged to be one of the two people who began this program in 2007. The other person who helped begin this journey with me was Dr. Joseph Tauber. Over the past 15 years, Together We Remember has taken approximately 200 Jewish high school students from the Kansas City area to Washington, D.C. for a comprehensive study of the Holocaust at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The program also includes dinner at a kosher restaurant in Washington, D.C., and a guided nighttime tour of the Washington monuments.
I could not sustain this program without the help of the Midwest Center For Holocaust Education (MCHE). We have been fortunate to have MCHE leaders such as Jessica Rockhold, Shelly Cline, and Laura Patton. They created a program that consists of two sessions here in Kansas City which take an in-depth look at the history and causes of the Holocaust, which is then followed up by a docent-led tour at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
We teach our children to “Never Forget,” but we also must teach them what it is that they are not supposed to forget. The goal of Together We Remember is to teach young people how to recognize hatred, bigotry and antisemitism, and, most of all, what they should do to prevent these evils.
Sam Devinki is Vice President and Honorary President for Life of Kehilath Israel Synagogue. He serves on the United States Holocaust Memorial Council and received the Wings of Memory Leadership Award for the Midwest Region by the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.