Teachers from Newtown and Southbury complete Holocaust curriculum training at the Quinnipiac University School of Education

More than 25 teachers from Connecticut, including Newtown High School teacher Jim Rovello and Rochambeau Middle School teacher Deborah Frost, completed a Feb. 5 training program on “Echoes and Reflections: A Multimedia Curriculum on the Holocaust,” a comprehensive 10-part curriculum on the Holocaust. The Connecticut Office of the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) sponsored the training, which took place at
the Quinnipiac University School of Education.

“Echoes and Reflections” uses visual history testimony from survivors and other witnesses and additional primary source documents, including maps, photographs, timelines, literature excerpts and other materials. The curriculum was produced primarily for use in high schools in partnership with the Anti-Defamation League, the USC Shoah Foundation Institute for Visual History and Education and Yad Vashem, the Holocaust’s Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Committee.

In addition, Holocaust survivor Anita Schorr, of Westport, addressed the teachers. A native of Czechoslovakia, Schorr was arrested with her family in 1939 when she was 8,
according to an April 12, 2012 article in “The Jewish Ledger.” The family survived the Jewish ghetto and was
transported to Terezin, where Schorr sang in the children’s opera, “Brundibár.” The family was then deported to Auschwitz, where Schorr’s parents and younger brother were murdered. Schorr served in a slave-labor unit in Hamburg before ending up in Bergen-Belsen. After liberation, Schorr joined the Haganah, a Jewish parliamentary organization, and fought in the Israeli War of Independence. She married a fellow Czech and lived on a kibbutz until 1959, when the couple came to the U.S. Trained as a commercial artist, Schorr didn’t start telling
her story until about 10 years ago, after retiring from a long career.

Quinnipiac is a private, coeducational, nonsectarian institution located 90 minutes north of New York City and two hours from Boston. The university enrolls 6,200
full-time undergraduate and 2,300 graduate students in 58 undergraduate and more than 20 graduate programs of study in its School of Business and Engineering, School of Communications, School of Education, School of Health Sciences, School of Law, Frank
H. Netter MD School of Medicine, School of Nursing and College of Arts and Sciences. Quinnipiac consistently ranks among the top regional universities in the North in U.S. News & World Report’s America’s
Best Colleges issue. The 2013 issue of U.S. News & World Report’s America’s Best Colleges named Quinnipiac as the top up-and-coming school with master’s programs in the Northern Region. Quinnipiac also is recognized in Princeton
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