About Us

The CUJF Holocaust Education Center serves as a resource to help school systems comply with the 1990 Illinois state mandate to teach about the Holocaust in fifth, eight, and tenth grades. (Public Act 86-780)

The committee is also dedicated to providing assistance to all individuals in the greater Champaign-Urbana area who wish to address the universal lessons to be learned from the Holocaust.

The committee sends information about the Holocaust to public school teachers and college students majoring in education; sponsors and grants scholarships for in-service teacher training programs; provides videos, books, and newspapers to local libraries and schools and speakers to area classrooms.

Holocaust Education Trunks

Holocaust Education Trunks provide materials and ready-to-use units that vary in readability and format, are grade-appropriate, and are relevant to all learning styles.

• Teacher Reference Books
• Lesson Plans
• Fiction and Non-fiction Books (classroom sets)
• Videos and DVDs; CD-ROMS
• Poetry and Scripts for Plays
• Artifact Kits

Holocaust Education Center Library

Hanukkah—the Festival of Lights

Before, During and After the Holocaust

Through photos, artifacts and personal testimony, this exhibition shares some of the ways this holiday was observed throughout Europe prior to the Holocaust, during the Holocaust years, and in the displaced persons camps and children’s homes following the war.

Torah scroll from the Bornplatz synagogue saved on Kristallnacht. Gift of Joseph A. Bamberger and family. 129.94. Image from mjhnyc.org

A Torah Scroll Saved On Kristallnacht

It was November 9, 1938, at the home of Seligmann and Else Bamberger, and their children, Hannah and Joseph, in Hamburg, Germany. None of them forgot that night, called Kristallnacht (Night of Broken Glass) because of the shards of broken glass from the hundreds of stores, homes, and venerable synagogues that were attacked, looted, destroyed, and burned. It was the first large-scale, organized physical attack on the Jewish community by the Nazi hierarchy all across Germany and Austria.

“Gestapo, ” came the reply. “Open up. “

Two uniformed men barged in and began to search each room, closet, and even the bedclothes. Yet the person they sought was not there. Dr. Seligmann Bamberger, graduate of the University of Wuerzburg, teacher of chemistry and physics at the Jewish Carolienenstrasse school, and devoted leader of his synagogue, had been warned. He was at that moment evading the mobs and making his way through the threatening streets to the Bornplatz synagogue. His mission: To rescue the objects at the very heart of the Jewish community—the Torah scrolls. With the other synagogue leaders, he entered the darkened building and, hoping the scrolls were still there, opened the ark that held them. . . .

The Terezin Project: Music, Artwork, Poetry, Children’s Experiences

My name is Tamra Gingold, and I am the Orchestra Director at Urbana High School.  I have always been an advocate for exposing my students to a broad range of culture by using music.  I decided to do a unit on the Holocaust, focusing on the music, artwork, and poetry of Terezin, knowing that I would only be able to touch the surface as there was so much information and several of my students knew absolutely nothing about it except that it happened.   In addition to researching the music, artwork, poetry, and prisoners of Terezin, students got the opportunity to hear from survivors of the Holocaust, including my dad, Dr. William Gingold.  They learned how to play several melodies from songs composed in Terezin as well as songs written in remembrance of the 12 million+ souls whose lives were ended because of hate, ignorance, and fear.