At Penn Hills, a human contact to Holocaust

Published June 2010 Voice

It is arguably humankind’s darkest chapter, its starkest instance of inhumanity.

So who better to bring home the Holocaust’s horror than, well, an actual human? Not some cyber story neatly accessed via Google links. Not some faceless name on some expressionless pages.

A real person. Flesh and bone. Smiles and frowns. Laughter and tears.

“That’s the thing: the human bond,” said Angela Keeley, a 9th grade English teacher at Linton Middle School and member of the Penn Hills EA, Western Region.

That “human bond” is the practical, proven method Keeley had in mind in April, when for the second time in three years her class hosted Anne Frank stepsister and Holocaust survivor Eva Schloss, author of “Eva’s Story.”

“It’s not the Internet, or even reading about it in a book, or having the teacher tell them what she knows,” Keeley said. “They get to see her, and her emotions. Hear her voice crack when she talks about her family. Hear that she still has hope, that she still laughs.”

Schloss was, in the truest sense, a Frank contemporary. They were the same age – each was 4 when Hitler came to power – and grew up as friends in the same Amsterdam apartment building. Their tragic paths paralleled further from there: each went into hiding for two years before being discovered by the Nazis; each went to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp; and after World War II, Anne’s father, Otto, married Schloss’ mother, Fritzi.

The critical divergence in the pair’s stories was that Schloss survived and Frank did not.

When B’nai B’rith offered Keeley the chance to host Schloss in 2008, and Keeley’s principal approved, Keeley “jumped at the opportunity.”

“At the time I was teaching 8th grade, and we read ‘The Diary of Anne Frank,’ ” Keeley said. “The fact that they could kind of see that story in real life was really an awesome opportunity for them.”

Schloss was so impressed by Keeley’s class – its attentiveness, its preparation, its questions and its interest – that Keeley received a rare second shot at hosting Schloss this spring. Keeley jumped again.

“Having it once I thought was just phenomenal,” Keeley said. “Then to ask if we’d be interested in hosting Eva again? I just felt really blessed, and was really flattered.”

Schloss’ return was a testament to Keeley’s 2008 class; Keeley invited those students, two years older now, back for Round 2. Keeley also added a modern wrinkle: She shared Schloss’ visit via video conference with six other Allegheny County schools, including Penn Hills Senior High.

“Participation was amazing,” Keeley said. “No questions were repeated, and some of the schools thought of questions we hadn’t thought of. So it was really neat.”

But the neatest part, again, was Schloss herself, and the human contact point she provided the students.

“Unless it hits them personally, it’s fiction to them; I don’t think it really hits home,” Keeley said. “But to have that person, it really has impact. I think they get the idea of what the Holocaust really was because they met her. I can have all the books in the world, but I can’t teach them that.”