CHARLOTTE, N.C. — January 27 marks the 80th anniversary of International Holocaust Remembrance Day, commemorating the liberation of the German Nazi concentration and extermination camp in Auschwitz.

Remembrance events happening worldwide are helping preserve the victims and survivors’ memories, while raising awareness and education about one of the darkest chapters in world history.

A North Carolina group reflects on the work it's doing to ensure facts and stories about the Holocaust are continuing to be told.

Katie Cunningham serves as assistant director for The Stan Greenspon Holocaust and Social Justice Education Center.

Located on the Queens University of Charlotte campus, Cunningham says the center is taking huge strides with supporting teachers and students in public education.

“I get to do in-school programming and mentor Jewish teens in the area, so they can share their narrative about what it means to be a Jewish teen in Charlotte today,” Cunningham said.  

In 2021, North Carolina passed the Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act. The law mandates holocaust education in public schools for middle and high school campuses. 

The Stan Greenspon Center launched a Holocaust Pedagogy Certification Program to help teachers expand their understanding about the Holocaust.

"A large portion of teachers that were now expected to teach this requirement didn't necessarily have either the historical content or the pedagogical knowledge to implement or teach about the traumatic history,” Cunningham said."A large portion of teachers that were now expected to teach this requirement didn't necessarily have either the historical content or the pedagogical knowledge to implement or teach about the traumatic history,” Cunningham said.

The pilot program launched in 2022, covering events leading up to the Holocaust and after.

“We brought for the first cohort 17 amazing educators to test our content,” Cunningham said. “We took all their feedback and made changes for cohort 2, graduating 13 for a total of 30 graduates in the first two years of the program.”

The educators also took a trip to Poland, where much of the atrocities happened.

Teachers are then able to create a classroom curriculum based on their learnings and visual experiences.

“A safe space for our students to be learning about this without causing them harm or further trauma,” Cunningham said.

Erin Bass is a teacher at Trinity High School for the Randolph County School System. 

Bass says the pedagogy certification is enabling her to safely teach this subject matter in classroom environments.

“We talk a lot about safely in and safely out, and it helps me to remember [the students] are going to have certain emotions seeing these images, and this traumatic history,” Bass said. “We have to think about that when we present the information to them.”

The Stan Greenspon Center Director Judy LaPietra says Holocaust education is needed in many communities.

“The Anti-Defamation League recently conducted a survey, and the findings were quite astonishing," LaPietra said. "Twenty percent of those surveyed had never heard of the Holocaust, and almost 50% of those who had [heard of it] had incorrect factual historic information.”

“There is definitely a need to expand this education. There are growing incidents of Antisemitism in schools throughout the country. Any way the Stan Greenspon Center can support our educators in Holocaust education, we will do that — one teacher at a time, one student at a time," LaPietra said. 

LaPietra credits support from the Blumenthal Foundation for helping the center with providing the Poland trip and certification experience for teachers.

Anyone interested in applying for the pedagogy program can email the center’s assistant director at cunninghamk@queens.edu.