Annie Hatch, a teacher at Life Academy, writes about a letter
her class received from a Holocaust survivor and Nobel Laureate.
Above, the students listen to another speaker on the subject. –
Katy The letter arrived on a cold, rainy day in late January. I
saw it sitting there, unobtrusively, in my box in Life Academy’s
main office. I examined the return address closely to make sure
it was real. My heart started beating faster as I realized what
had happened. My students had written letters to Holocaust
survivor and Nobel Laureate Elie Wiesel three months earlier,
and he had written back. Back up to the beginning of September.
Before beginning this school year, the majority of my tenth-
grade students had never heard of the Holocaust. They had seen
countless images of Hitler, but many couldn’t tell me if he was
a “good” or “bad” leader. They had no idea what a Jew was. And
World War Two was some distant battle, fought eons ago for some
obscure reason. After I had them read Wiesel’s autobiographical
book Night, m