Welcome to The Olga Lengyel Institute

  • A student in Mike Madden’s class in Sugar Land, Texas, prepares the Hall of Remembrance to prepare for a community-wide event. [...continue reading]
  • Students in in Boise, Idaho celebrate their accomplishments in the “Story, Humanity, Home” project led by Diane Williams. [...continue reading]
  • Seminar Participant Michelle Sadrena Clark (’13) with President Obama at the USC Shoah Foundation Gala in Los Angeles. [...continue reading]
  • HEN teachers and faculty create portrait boxes on day 1 of the summer seminar. [...continue reading]
  • Irving Roth, Holocaust survivor and Director of the Holocaust Resource Center- Temple Judea, speaks with participant Andrea Kirkpatrick. [...continue reading]
  • Concluding an all-day writing marathon at the Voices of Liberty exhibit at the Museum of Jewish Heritage in lower Manhattan. [...continue reading]
  • Rabbi Greg Wall brings klezmer music to our classroom, Auschwitz survivor Olga Lengyel’s former dining room. [...continue reading]
  • After days of immersion in Holocaust history and testimony, HEN teachers and faculty enjoy an evening in NY harbor aboard Captain Pat’s schooner. [...continue reading]
  • HEN teachers approach the memorial at the entry gate to the Majdanek concentration camp in Lublin, Poland. [...continue reading]
  • Teachers in the 2013 Leadership Institute held at John Jay College, CUNY, receive advanced training before mounting seminars in their home states. [...continue reading]

Contact

For more information about The Olga Lengyel Institute for Holocaust Studies and Human Rights (TOLI), please contact info@tolinstitute.org

TOLI is located at 58 East 79th Street in Manhattan. (get directions)

The mission of TOLI is to educate students in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world about human rights and social justice through the lens of the Holocaust and other genocides so that such atrocities may never again take place.

To accomplish its mission, TOLI provides professional development seminars for educators in the US and abroad that link the lessons of the Holocaust and other genocides to current world events, thereby working with teachers to promote a human rights and social justice agenda in their classrooms. Read more about TOLI.

Holocaust Educators in Action

Amber Tilley: The Urgency of Teaching Holocaust Literature

Amber Tilley, a teacher at Northland Pines High School, was raised in a small Wisconsin town. She recalls how profoundly moved she was by Elie Wiesel’s book “Night” when starting her career. She knew she wanted to teach the book and its depiction of Auschwitz and genocide, but she didn’t have any experience in Holocaust […continue]

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Learning from the Past, Acting for the Future

We are happy to share with you our brand new Handbook – Learning from the Past, Acting for the Future, describing TOLI interdisciplinary approach, based on the experience of working in 10 European countries, over the last 10 years. In this handbook, teachers can find: a rationale for an interdisciplinary approach combining Holocaust education, human […continue]

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Why I Became a Holocaust Educator

Meet Kimberly Jones, high school teacher from Chapel Hill, NC who participated in TOLI’s 2022 Seminar on Holocaust and Human Rights Education.   When Kimberly Jones, a high school English teacher from Chapel Hill, North Carolina, first taught the Holocaust seventeen years ago, she probably didn’t anticipate it would become a vital part of her […continue]

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TOLI Seminar Leader Nicole Korsen’s Lesson Featured in PBS Documentary

Nicole Korsen is an English teacher at Dominion High School in Sterling, Virginia, and one of TOLI’s Satellite Seminar leaders. She created the lesson “The Symbolism of the Statue of Liberty” featured in the new Ken Burns PBS documentary “The U.S. and the Holocaust”. Find “The Symbolism of the Statue of Liberty” on PBS here>> […continue]

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Statement by the Board of Directors of TOLI on Ukraine

TOLI strongly condemns the Russian invasion of Ukraine, an unprovoked assault that has brought incalculable suffering and loss of life to the people of Ukraine.  We deplore President Putin’s justification for the attack as “denazification,” a gross distortion of Holocaust history applied to a democratic country whose Jewish president lost family in the Holocaust.   […continue]

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