Field Trips and Guest Speakers for Holocaust Lit @ LHS

At Lincoln High School, students in the Holocaust Literature class engage deeply with the histories  and impact of mass atrocity, both globally and within their own communities. The course includes units on the Holocaust, the Rwandan genocide, the genocide of Native Americans, and the Yazidi genocide.

This class pairs each unit with field trips or guest speakers that connect students with local stories and survivors. Students explore local Holocaust history through museum exhibits and archival testimony, study the impact of the nearby Genoa Indian Industrial School, visit the Great Plains Art Museum to analyze modern Indigenous artwork, and learn about the Yazidi genocide through collaboration with Lincoln’s Yazidi community, the largest in North America. These experiences offer students the opportunity to learn from and advocate for their neighbors, emphasizing that genocide is not a distant or abstract issue, but one with real human consequences close to home.

Holocaust Literature at Lincoln High takes a preventative approach, teaching students that violence is not inevitable and that small actions today can prevent mass atrocity later. By building empathy, critical thinking, and skills for genuine listening, students begin to see their role in interrupting patterns of dehumanization before they escalate to violence.

Funds raised will support transportation, museum admission, and payment for guest speakers. We are requesting $1,000 plus cost reimbursement to the Foundation. 

Donors,

A huge thank you for all of your support! We had our first field trip of the year last Monday, September 29th. We went to the Samuel Bak museum in Aksarben. This field trip was in conjunction with the Institute for Holocaust Education in Nebraska. Students also heard testimony from a third generation Holocaust survivor (grandchild of a Holocaust survivor).

I will continue to update with future guest speakers and field trips! 

Happy National Native American Heritage Month! These last four weeks, students have been investigating the history of genocide against the Indigenous peoples of the United States and Canada. Throughout the past four weeks, students have analyzed Indigenous creation stories, learned about the impact of forced removal, studied Indian boarding schools, and looked at cultural preservation as well as modern Indigenous art, music, poetry, and short films. Thanks to you and your donation, students have been grappling with local histories and Indigenous people in our region. We have studied the Genoa U.S. Indian Industrial School thanks to UNL's digital reconciliation project. Dr. Gabriel Bruguier, an enrolled member of the Yankton Sioux tribe and Librarian at UNL, also came to speak with students on November 7th about residential schools in the United States and how they impacted local communities, particularly his family. Last Thursday, November 13th students visited the Great Plains Art Museum in downtown Lincoln to interact with the exhibits about the Otoe-Missouria people, whose ancestral homelands are near Lincoln; UNL has partnered with the Otoe-Missouria people and worked on a vast array of projects to help the residents of Lincoln and members of the tribe interact. Lastly, Steve Tamayo, Sicangu Lakota specialist and working artist, visited students today to discuss Indigenous geography of the region, Lakota art, and traditional games. We ended with students playing a few games that Steve brought for us! Your donation allows students to engage deeply with local Indigenous histories and lived experiences that are so often ignored. Thanks to you, we were also able to pay people for the impressive work that they do! Attached are a few pictures below.

Hi everyone! I have a photoless update for you today; I was too busy taking notes in both classes that I forgot to snap a picture of our guest speakers.

Currently, we are in our unit studying the 2014 Yazidi genocide. Lincoln is home to the largest Yazidi community in North America. Many of our Yazidi neighbors started coming here after serving as interpretors for the U.S. army in the Iraq war and later after the 2014 genocide suffered at the hands of ISIS. Yazidis are an ethnoreligious group indigenous to Mesopotamia and what we now know as northern Iraq. Yazidis of all ages from around Lincoln—including current and former Links!—came to speak to our 3rd and 6th period classes today about who Yazidis are, what makes their religion and culture unique, how the genocide has affected specific individuals and the collective community, and how Yazidis in Lincoln are working hard to preserve their language and customs.

While this was not a specific paid opportunity, your overall support in this campaign helps me to network and reach out to various people around Lincoln to ensure we are engaging with the stories of local community members. At the end of both class periods, Yazidi speakers urged students to take action to advocate for the community, stating that their actions can help prevent future genocides from occurring. That is what this class is all about.

Expect to receive a handwritten note from a student in the coming weeks. I truly appreciate what your donation has done for my classes this semester. If you are interesting in continuing to support this campaign, I work to integrate field trips and guest speakers every fall semester when I teach this class. Thank you again!