DR. MIRIAM KLEIN KASSENOFF: FROM HOLOCAUST TARGET TO HOLOCAUST EDUCATOR February 28, 2002 One of the nation's handful of full-time teachers of the Holocaust is preparing for her busiest time of the year. Dr. Miriam Klein Kassenoff escaped Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia as a small child and went on to become an Education Specialist in Miami-Dade County Public Schools who helps the district comply with the state law requiring public schools to teach about the Holocaust. Holocaust Remembrance Day occurs this year on April 9, and begins the Week of Remembrance, April 9&endash;16. The U.S. Holocaust Memorial Council encourages school and community programs during the week to ensure that the horrendous crimes against humanity committed during the Nazi Holocaust are never forgotten, and its relevance for each new generation is understood. Although the school district has an ongoing Holocaust Education Program, Remembrance Week is a peak period for class discussions, lectures by Holocaust survivors, films, and student assignments on the Holocaust. In preparation for the annual event, Dr. Klein Kassenoff has made certain that all schools have been provided an extensive instructional packet. Dr. Klein Kassenoff also serves as the Education Director of the Holocaust Memorial on Miami Beach. The job involves coordinating tours of up to 15,000 students annually as well as working with Avi Mizrachi, Director of the Memorial, to schedule a monthly lecture by Holocaust scholars for educators, students and the public. She also arranges for Holocaust survivors to speak in classes and at school assembly programs. With language arts teacher Gail Slatko, she coordinates the Holocaust Memory writing project for survivors to record their memoirs for the Holocaust Memorial and for the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington. With Mizrachi, Dr. Klein Kassenoff also helps plan and carry out community observances of "Kristallnacht," the "Night of the Broken Glass," and "Yom Hashoah," the Day of Remembrance, at the Memorial. Together with all these activities, she manages to conduct a course for teachers titled "Teaching and Studying About the Holocaust" at the University of Miami. Dr. Klein Kassenoff and Dr. Anita Meyer Meinbach, Miami-Dade County Public Schools' Teacher of the Year, wrote "Memories of the Night-A Study of the Holocaust," published in 1994 by Frank Schaffer Publications, Inc. The two teachers also co-authored "A Guide to the Holocaust," published by Grolier Educational Press in 1997. Last week (Mar. 2-5) Dr. Klein Kassenoff was among those making presentations at the 32nd Annual Scholars' Conference on the Holocaust and the Churches, held at Kean University in Union, New Jersey. Titled "The Genocidal Mind," this year's conference explored the timely subject of how ordinary individuals become implicated in methodical terror. When she was just a small child, Dr. Klein Kassenoff very nearly became a casualty of the Nazis herself. She was only four years old when her family escaped from Czechoslovakia and was sheltered by a network of rescuers for eight terrifying months as they made their way across Nazi-occupied Europe to Lisbon, where they boarded a ship bound for America in May 1941. "During that period there were only three ships that left for America carrying Jews escaping the Holocaust," she recalls. "We were fortunate to be aboard one of them." ### 02-AC0205/BD Back to News Releases