Democratic Oregon Gov. Kate Brown signed a bill into law Monday that requires Oregon’s public schools to educate students about the Holocaust.
The law was conceived by Claire Sarnowski, a 14-year-old Lake Oswego resident, after she developed a four-year-long friendship with Alter Wiener, a Holocaust survivor. Wiener, who spent three years in concentration camps, tirelessly advocated Holocaust education in schools. After he visited Sarnowski’s school, she took up the fight.
“Alter’s dream was to mandate education which would continue the legacy of the Holocaust and genocides,” Sarnowski said in a public testimony. “Although he is not here with me today, he prepared me to carry on his mission and to persevere in making this a reality.”
Wiener, 92, was killed in a traffic accident in December and failed to see his vision come to life.
Under the new law, public schools will have to “prepare students to confront the immorality of the Holocaust, genocide, and other acts of mass violence and to reflect on the cause of related historical events.” Other lessons will focus on cultural diversity and the importance of protecting international human rights, according to Fox News.
The new mandate will go into effect during the 2020-2021 school year. Only 11 other states require the Holocaust to be taught as part of public school curriculum, according to the Anti-Defamation League. Washington state passed a bill in April that “strongly encourages” teaching about the genocide.
The push for mandated Holocaust education comes as Americans increasingly seem to lack basic knowledge of the event. According to a 2018 poll, two-thirds of millennials failed to identify Auschwitz as a concentration camp, and over half of Americans think Hitler came to power by force.
“Today more than ever, we need the learning opportunities that a bill like this will bring our schools,” Brown said at the signing ceremony.
New York Reps. Carolyn Maloney, a Democrat, and Elise Stefanik, a Republican, introduced similar legislation to the House in January. The bipartisan bill would create a grant program to provide teachers with resources to teach about the Holocaust.
