By Eileen Oldfield Staff Writer
HILLSBOROUGH — Standing in the Wannsee Mansion in Berlin at the start of a trip for New Jersey Holocaust educators, Hillsborough High School history teacher Jeff Kampf knew it would be a life-altering experience.
”When they decided what to do with so many of the Jews who were put in ghettos, and realizing that it only took 90 minutes to make the decision to murder them all,” Mr. Kampf said. “Being in that Wannsee Mansion, I got goose bumps thinking of the Nazi elite contemplating mass murder.”
Mr. Kampf’s 13-day trip brought him through Germany, the Czech Republic, Poland, and the Netherlands with 23 teachers from throughout the state. Led by Maud Dahme, a hidden child and Holocaust survivor, the educators visited sites involving the Holocaust, including the Wannsee Mansion, the Terezin, Auschwitz, and Plaszow concentration camps in the Czech Republic and Poland, respectively, the Warsaw and Krakow ghettos, Oscar Schindler’s factory, and the Anne Frank house and museum.
The New Jersey Commission on Holocaust Education funds the trip, except for expenses and a $500 deposit, and selects genocide and holocaust educators from throughout the state to attend it.
Despite the larger-than-life evil associated with the Holocaust, seeing the structures first-hand brings an eerie reality to the event, Mr. Kampf said and enforces the reality of the event.
”(In photos and in movies) The buildings are so big that it’s like aliens do it,” Mr. Kampf said. “When you see the gas chambers and you see the ovens, you realize that it’s man-made.”
”It means that they didn’t care about the quality of life or the quality of food,” he added. “You realize that those buildings were temporary structures because most were going to be killed anyway.”
While the teachers visited other sites in the countries during their spare time, most of the sites focused on the aspects of the Holocaust. Visiting the sites both humanizes the victims and shows the banality of the evil, Mr. Kampf said.
”When you stand in the bedroom that Anne Frank was hidden in, and see the posters and pictures of her favorite movie stars that are still on the wall, it hits you that Anne Frank was not a superstar or a famous literary figure,” Mr. Kampf said. “You realize that she’s just a teenage girl, like the kids you teach. If she had an MP3 player or iPod, she’d be listening to the same music my students do.”

