On January 29, 2025, there was a presentation given to Carter Riverside by The Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, educating the importance of why it’s dire to remember tragedies like the Holocaust. During the presentation, she states the importance of learning history is to learn and educate saying “The way to stop this from happening again was to educate”. The timeline spans from when Adolf Hitler was in power to when the Jews were liberated. Not only that, but they gave information about how Hitler became powerful and how or why the Jews were oppressed.
Holocaust Remembrance Day is an international memorial day to commemorate the victims of the Holocaust. During the presentation, the presenter states that from the beginning of World War and the aftermath of World War 1, the Jews were used as a scapegoat in Germany to give reasons why they lost the war. To give context, Germany lost World War 1 and was pressured to the Treaty of Versailles, making Germany take all faults and sending them into a recession and millions of dollars in debt. As a result, many Germans used the Jewish people to project their anger and resentment, portraying them as money-hungry, parasites, and “subhuman” (Nazi Propaganda). The Nazis took hold of this hatred and spread it through their propaganda, making discrimination for Jews on a platform. The presenter states, “This can happen anywhere, when hatred goes unchecked”, showing that it is our duty to make sure that discrimination that can lead to genocide must be stopped and recognized.
During the presentation, she talks about the three different camps that Jews were sent to. Death camps, concentration camps, and Labor camps. Each served different purposes but all were cruel and inhuman. The awareness of these camps didn’t reach the public till they were liberated after the war. Most of the camps were nearly empty when liberated because of all the deaths that happened. It is important to stay aware and make sure terrible places like this never exist again. Throughout the reign of Hitler, he used his power to spread hate and violence, and through violence is how he rose to power. Again shedding light on why it’s important to educate yourself on history to stop this from happening again. It’s important for our school to allow visitors like these to continue and educate history like this so their stories never die.