Holocaust studies prepare new college students for academic challenges

EL CAJON – Some of the students who will attend Grossmont College this fall are the first members of their families to go beyond high school in their education.  In many instances, notes Michael Perez, director for Extended Opportunity Program and Services (EOPS), these students are part of a six-week summer bridge program known as the Summer Institute Program (SIP).  Primarily, it serves immigrants to the United States and members of economically disadvantaged families.

This summer 28 such students enrolled in two classes for a combined credit of six units to burnish their English writing skills and to learn strategies for studying in a college environment.  A considerable portion of their English course will focus on the Holocaust.   The students will read Night in which Elie Wiesel told of his experiences at the Buchenwald and Auschwitz concentration camps.  They will also meet Holocaust survivors Max and Rose Schindler of San Diego on July 22.  Two days later, SIP students will travel to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.

“We have a really culturally diverse group here,” said English instructor Joey Lepetri, who team teaches with counselor Pearl Lopez.  “The idea of respecting other cultures, other religious traditions, is so very important given the variety of religious traditions that are here on campus. Night provides a perfect vehicle for engaging those issues and topics.  When we bring the students to the Museum of Tolerance, it brings those issues to life for them.  They recognize how intolerance, hate and ignorance can lead to horrible, unbelievable tragedies.”

Two of the program’s alumni took a few moments from their volunteer duties at a recent SIP barbecue for new students to relate their experiences in previous years at the Museum of Tolerance.  That museum features a variety of interactive exhibits to interpret the phases of the Holocaust.  Typically visitors are issued a “passport” in the name of a real person and they follow that person’s fate as the Holocaust unfolds.  The visitors don’t find out until the end of the tour what happened to the actual person whose story they have followed.

Riyam Mansoor, who immigrated three and a half years ago with her family from war-torn Iraq, said the interactive tour was quite different from her experience at other museums where she had gazed at pictures, writings, and historical clothing.   At the Museum of Tolerance, she said, “I felt like I was living it, from the fear to the torture.”

Mansoor said that a comment was made afterwards that the Holocaust was in the past, and therefore not preventable.  However, in the future, other holocausts are possible.  She said she worries about the ongoing “war in Iraq which affects a huge population.”  She added that the museum experience helped motivate her to want to become an international lawyer, focusing on such issues as human rights.

Ulises Alarcon-Villaseñor, who has been serving as a teaching assistant in the SIPS program and is transferring in the Fall to SDSU, said he was “blown away” by the trip to the museum.  “It gave the students the opportunity to see what was going on in the world and the reasons why the world is the way it is today,” he said. 

The overall experience, he said, “makes you look at yourself and wonder why you complain about little things.  “The people who went through the Holocaust (in many cases) were tortured every single day, couldn’t eat for weeks, which resulted in the many deaths and the few survivals.  They literally went through hell on earth and today some of us complain about little things, like being so tired we don’t want to go to school, when really there is not an extenuating excuse to do so. 

“Many of these survivors after being liberated were so hungry to get educated that they went and got an education and succeeded at it,” added Alarcon, who immigrated nine years ago from Mexico.  “We should look at them as role models and great examples of determination to survive and to be educated.”

-DHH-