Nineteen educators from Montana, Oregon, and Wisconsin will gather in Billings, June 13-19,  for a  program on teaching the Holocaust.  The seminar takes place when extremism and attacks on minorities have reached alarming levels in the US. 

The seminar, Worlds Apart but not Strangers: Holocaust Education and Indian Education for All, focuses upon the impact of anti-Jewish laws and policies by Germany during the Holocaust and U.S. government policies that persecuted  Native peoples in this country.

The seminar, annually organized by the Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Education and Human Rights enables teachers to present the Holocaust as a watershed event in history, to examine its causes and consequences, and apply its lessons to today’s world when extremism – fed by conspiracy theories, stereotypes and hate-mongering – is on the rise. 

To date, nineteen states in the US have mandated the teaching of the Holocaust as part of secondary school curricula. Montana is not among them. Now more than ever, Montana needs the TOLI program as the current Attorney General and Superintendent of Public Schools are committed to defunding schools from K-secondary who discuss “critical race theory”. 

Read about it here.  

The program will include two field trips: one to Congregation Beth Aaron Synagogue and the other to the Crow and Northern Cheyenne reservations, and to the site of the Battle of the Little Bighorns/ Battle of the Greasy Grass.