Holocaust Remembrance

Tonight I attended the Holocaust Remembrance Program of the Greater Syracuse Community themed Never Again: What you do matters. At the Remembrance they had a hallway dedicated to the winners of the art competition held throughout Syracuse middle and high schools.

For the competition students were encouraged to create what "Never Again: What you do matters" means to you. It was great to see the different ways students represented the Holocaust and what the event meant to them. There was one picture where the page was filled with random words all over describing the word remember. There was one where a student had sculpted a picture of women looking out of window through clay. There was a few pictures where students had drawn using crayons or colored pencils different representations of concentration camps. There was an excellent sketch by a high school girl that was a large portrait of a concentration camp where she used simple shading with black and white to create an image of pain and sadness.

Seeing how students used different forms of art to make sense of such a terrible part of our history really hit home to me as to how important art can be for students. Using it as a form of expression in this case allowed the students to get their feelings of pain, sadness, and helplessness that was captured inside of them from learning about the Holocaust.