We had 525 entries this year in our annual Tribute to the Rescuers Essay Contest. Students from high schools across Nebraska and Iowa wrote 750-1000 words about someone who portrayed moral courage. Four winners were selected and awarded scholarships for 9th & 10th grade and the 11th & 12th grade categories.The essays go through a rigorous, three-part judging process made possible this year by both a live judging event in February and online judging rounds in March. The Essay Contest is made possible with the support of the Carl Frohm Memorial Foundation. To read all the winning essays, click HERE.

9th and 10th Grade Category

11th and 12th Grade Category

Educator Spotlight

Sandy Renken

I graduated from University of Nebraska at Keaney in 1990 with a degree in Education with endorsements in 7-12 social studies and 7-12 physical education. I earned my Master's Degree in Curriculum and Instruction from Doane University in 2003. My education career began at Adams Public Schools in Adams, NE, in August of 1993 and I have been there ever since, although with consolidation came the name change to Freeman Public Schools.

My Holocaust education journey began when I attended the Belfer I Conference in 2002. I was in awe of the museum staff and Teacher Fellows who shared their knowledge, and it was then that I knew I wanted to learn more. I approached my principal and School Board about adding a new Holocaust and Genocide class and they were overwhelmingly supportive of the idea. In 2006, I applied for and was honored to be chosen as a U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Teacher Fellow.Because of that experience, I have changed the way I approach not only Holocaust education, but the manner in which I teach all of my courses.

While attending the Fellowship program, I was made aware of an organization forming in Nebraska to promote Holocaust education throughout the state, the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium. At the first meeting, I met Beth Dotan who was then the director of the IHE, and she invited me to an Echoes and Reflections training she was facilitating. I have been a member of the Nebraska Holocaust Education Consortium and cooperating with the IHE ever since.

As a USHMM Teacher Fellow, I have been fortunate to present at several conferences around the United States including the Belfer Conference in Washington, D.C., which had been my first introduction to Holocaust education. I continually challenge myself to learn as much about the Holocaust as I can to facilitate a better learning environment for my students. I have participated in workshops through Facing History and Echoes and Reflections and in 2014, I was chosen to attend the Olga Lengyel Institute (TOLI) summer workshop in New York City and become a part of the Holocaust Educator's network. I have also received three levels of training with Yahad-In Unum, a French organization headed by Father Patrick Desbois, whose mission is to locate and document mass graves and crimes against Jews during World War II in central and eastern Europe. All of these programs have provided me with Holocaust expertise from varying perspectives that I can share with my students.

On a personal level, I feel education provides me with an immense opportunity to make the world a better place by impacting each and every student I teach in a positive manner. I believe there is an abundance of evidence that the work that we do as Holocaust educators is needed now more than ever in recent history.

Days of Remembrance

For the Days of Remembrance, we chose to honor the week of Holocaust Remembrance Days by presenting our Facebook and newsletter subscribers poems and artwork pieces created by students throughout the Lincoln Public Schools. These pieces were originally created to be published in a pamphlet for the Lincoln Commemoration that was scheduled last April. To see the booklet in its entirety, click HERE.

Art and the Holocaust

In order to build knowledge of the Holocaust and the role of art during that period of history, the IHE works with teachers around the metro each year to develop an art component for students to work on related to the Holocaust. Participating teachers then share this information with their students during at least one full class period of Holocaust background study before commencing with the visual art portion of the project. Suggested projects are literature-inspired murals, an artifact collage, or a charcoal portrait of a victim of the Holocaust or of someone who has a shared life experience. With a closed JCC facility and hundreds of high-quality student art prints to display, we decided to take our art show online this year to showcase the talent and creativity of our middle school students. Students from nine middle schools around the Omaha metro area drew art pieces of our local survivors. To see their work, click HERE.

Jack Diamond

Holocaust survivor Jack Diamond recently passed away at age 97 from complications of Covid-19. Many of you may remember Jack and Minde from their time in Nebraska, either from his many years at Nebraska Furniture Mart or through their involvement with Beth Israel Synagogue. He worked at NFM from 1952 until his retirement in 2012 at age 90. At work, he was once introduced to Mr. Warren Buffet. As the story goes, he politely said hello before stepping away to help a customer.

Jack grew up in Poland as Zelik Dimenstein. In the spring of 1942, Nazis destroyed his town of Dolhinov. Zelik was away doing forced labor, and his mother was among hundreds massacred.

Zelik (Jack) fought as a member of a resistance group, the Russian partisans, and helped hide other Jews from capture. Somehow he, too, survived.

He is survived by his wife of nearly 74 years, Minde, also a Holocaust survivor. Jack's obituary in the Omaha World Herald can be read HERE.

Educator Spotlight

Katrina Gotschall

I have been an English and Social Studies educator in rural Northcentral Nebraska for 15 years, spending the majority of that time teaching at O'Neill High School. After having the privilege of working with the Nebraska Writing Project, and The Institute for Holocaust Education of Nebraska since 2009, and then taking a week-long seminar sponsored by The Olga Lengyel Institute For Holocaust Education in 2011, I created a Literature of the Holocaust course at O'Neill High School, which ran from 2012-2018. In that time, I was honored to have been able to work with so many incredible students who chose to take the class and immerse themselves in inquiry, rich discussion, and lots of writing.

In 2013, I attended the Memorial Library's Summer Seminar (now TOLI) in New York City, followed by the alumni conference in Detroit in 2017. I have served on the Nebraska Writing Project Advisory Board and have been a conference and seminar presenter for the Institute For Holocaust Education Nebraska since 2013, a Nebraska Writing Project summer teacher educator, and a presenter at the Malaika Foundation "Brave Teacher" Conference. In 2018 I was accepted into the USHMM Museum Teacher Fellows Program in Washington DC, where I met other incredible teachers from around the nation and world and deepened my understanding of this work even further in order to become a better teacher for my students at home and across the state. Most recently, I was accepted into the United States Institute of Peace Teacher Fellows Program, where I am working with 3 teachers across the nation to develop rich lessons about global conflict and peacebuilding in order to help students develop a stronger knowledge of international relations the role that peacebuilding plays in our homes, communities, and countries. I enjoy seeking professional development opportunities focusing on themes of social justice, history, and human rights, and I believe that putting myself out there and surrounding myself with incredible teachers from diverse backgrounds and experiences helps make me a more empathetic, wiser, and purpose-driven educator.

I have also been a photojournalism instructor for 15 years and have enjoyed being an entrepreneur since 2010 as the owner of a Fine Art Portrait business in which I enjoy creating both classic and storytelling fine art portraiture. My husband Scott and I ranch in the beautiful rolling Sandhills of Nebraska with our two boys, Carter (14) and Alex (12). Between educational, ranching, and entrepreneurial activities, I love to explore and adventure with my family, accompany students abroad for cultural learning experiences, and serve my school and community in various capacities.