November 1, 2001
UNITED STATES HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM INTERN PROGRAM WITH DC PUBLIC SCHOOLS COMPLETES EIGHTH YEAR
Museum Accepting Applications for 2002 Program
WASHINGTON, D.C. — The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum announced that 69 students completed the 2001 Bringing the Lessons Home summer intern program ending last August. The Museum is now accepting applications for this year’s program, which begins in February 2002. Bringing the Lessons Home trains public high school students from Washington, DC, and Prince George’s County, MD, high schools in Holocaust history and to become Museum docents.
Last February four dozen students entered an in-depth, 13-week training course focusing on the Holocaust and the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition. Thirty-five students graduated from the program and were hired by the Museum as paid interns, joining 34 returning graduates.
Interns provide tours of the Museum’s Permanent Exhibition to school groups, teachers, officers and recruits from several area police departments, and others. They also train for and conduct oral history interviews with Holocaust survivors in their communities and plan and participate in a five-day seminar with European and American students where they discuss current events and the Holocaust. Graduates may elect to continue serving in the Museum as interns or volunteers after August.
“Participants in the Bringing the Lessons Home program not only receive an important historical lesson, but work to make a difference in their communities by relating the consequences of hatred to peers and others,” explains Lynn Williams, the Museum’s Director of Community Partnerships. “It is exciting to watch the students as they forge connections with other students, police officers, teachers and others who tour the Museum under their guidance.”
The Bringing the Lessons Home program was launched in 1994. To date, a core group of 269 students have completed the course and have provided Museum tours and special programming to more than 25,000 students, teachers, parents and other community members.
“I would not know about those years in which millions of innocent people died at the hands of other people,” states Ilcia Moran, a graduate of Bell Multicultural High School and a Bringing the Lessons Home intern since 1995. “But worst of all, because I would not know about the people who died years ago, I would probably not care about the people who are living, as much as I do today.”
Applications for next year’s program, which begins in February, can be obtained by contacting David Klevan, Program Coordinator for Community Partnerships, at 202/488-0462. Bringing the Lessons Home is funded by a grant from the Fannie Mae Foundation, and is supported by the Seema Pulier Charitable Trust, Elliot and Wendy Friedman, and the Washington, DC Capitol Area Campaign.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum is America’s national institution for the documentation, study and interpretation of Holocaust history, and serves as this country’s memorial to the millions of people murdered during the Holocaust. Since opening in April 1993, the Museum has welcomed nearly 17 million visitors. The Museum’s primary mission is to advance and disseminate knowledge about this unprecedented tragedy; to preserve the memory of those who suffered; and to encourage its visitors to reflect upon the moral questions raised by the events of the Holocaust as well as their own responsibilities as citizens of a democracy.
