Holmdel Teacher Receives Holocaust Grant

HOLMDEL, NJ - An English teacher at the William R. Satz middle school in Holmdel recently received a grant from Rider University to help her teach about the Holocaust to her 7th and 8th grade students. Marissa Crimoli was awarded a grant from the Joan Lavine Keats Social Justice Institute of the Julius and Dorothy Koppelman Holocaust and Genocide Resource Center at Rider University.

The Holocaust is a state-mandated topic in all Language Arts classes. Crimoli uses her Master’s degree in Holocaust and Genocide studies to help her students take lessons from the past and apply them to the present and the future. “Recognizing that intolerance is a problem that has plagued mankind for centuries allows us, and particularly students, to recognize that this is not a new issue," she said. "By learning from the past, we have the opportunity to ensure that the same mistakes are not made in the future, encouraging us to promote tolerance in our current society.”

Mrs. Crimoli received $400 total in her grant, all of which was spent on books for her classroom. Books include Prisoner B-3087, a slightly dramatized account of a real Holocaust survivor’s struggles as a 10-year-old in a concentration camp; The Bielski Brothers: The True Story of Three Men who Defied the Nazis, Built a Village in the Forest, and Saved 1,200 Jews; and the critically-acclaimed, award winning graphic novels Maus I and Maus II, which paint an allegorical picture of the rise of the Nazis and the Holocaust.