A musical tribute to the Holocaust

SLIDESHOW: Holocaust Remembrance

Peggy R. Moncure, director of bands at Manchester Middle School, thought the Holocaust was a topic for social studies.

"I wondered how music was going to fit in the Holocaust," she said.

Then she took a course at the Virginia Holocaust Museum and found the music connection, and it profoundly changed her teaching focus, she said.

She embarked on a cross-curricular project involving her students and chorus, drama, art, technical education, English and JROTC.

The culmination of the united effort is a two-night "Holocaust Night of Remembrance" event filled with music, drama, literary works, art and a memorial to the 1.5 million children who lost their lives. Jay M. Ipson, a survivor and director of the Holocaust museum, will speak at the event.

Moncure said the summer course at the museum was a lot of work.

"It was emotionally draining, but I think it's something that every teacher should do," she said.

Rena Berlin, director of education at the Holocaust museum, said history and English teachers usually take the course, but music and art teachers attend, too. They need to have the information if they are going to teach the Holocaust for the state Standards of Learning, she said.

"The music teachers come to see it from a different view," she said. "They can get to a portion of the kids that nobody can get to because of their love of the arts."

Moncure said she had her students study about musicians banned by the Nazi regime, such as Felix Mendelssohn and Richard Strauss.

"We are playing Mendelssohn's 'March Cornelius' and Strauss' 'Thus Spake Zarathustra,'" she said. "The orchestra will also perform pieces that were banned."

Kim Rose said her students have choreographed original steps for a Hora dance and are singing two Hebrew songs, "Hava Hallelujah" and "Shalom Chaverim."

Katie Brooks, an eighth-grader, said she thought it interesting that what they are singing might have helped people get through the Holocaust.

"It's really awesome that we get to do something like this with our friends and remember something that deserves to be remembered in our world history," she said.

Students read such books as "A Place to Hide" and "Bearing Witness" and heard a recital of "The Harmonica," a book about a boy in a concentration camp whose life was saved by playing his harmonica to a guard.

Eighth-grader Cameron Taylor said he was surprised to find the musical connection to the Holocaust.

"When we used to think of the Holocaust, we used to think of a bunch of killing, but music being a part of it is really cool because we like music," he said.

Brent Tharp, an art teacher, got his class involved in the project by making paper dolls representing people of the Holocaust. The project gave them opportunities to talk about the history and lifestyle of the period, he said.

Brittany Duffie-Fritz, an eighth-grader, said she used to think that only Jews were killed, but then she found out that it was anyone the Nazis considered different.

"No one was allowed to be different," she said, as she made a doll. "The message that we're trying to send is not to discriminate because it could lead to things like the Holocaust."