Ilse Loeb, a Holocaust survivor and a former hidden child, has dedicated her life to sharing her story to raise awareness of the heinous example of man’s inhumanity to man and of what can result whe
By Charley Falkenburg, Staff Writer
MONTGOMERY — Ilse Loeb, a Holocaust survivor and a former hidden child, has dedicated her life to sharing her story to raise awareness of the heinous example of man’s inhumanity to man and of what can result when we choose to remain bystanders.
On Thursday, May 16, Mrs. Loeb spoke with the entire sixth grade of Montgomery Lower Middle School and members of the community.
Mrs. Loeb has spoken at LMS each year for the past eight years, sending her message to over three thousand children. Each year, our students learn that they are the last of their generation that will have the honor of meeting a Holocaust survivor and hearing her/his story.
The school’s ultimate goal, and a key tenet of Critical Literacy, is to teach children to move from the text into the world, a world in which they are obligated to use their knowledge to take social action.
LMS Language Arts Teacher Julie Brenner, said, “We have an urgent obligation to bring Mrs. Loeb to our children, to help them understand that the consequences of intolerance are not concepts that exist solely in literature, but rather are real and require that we, as compassionate human beings, take action to better our world.”
Mrs. Loeb tells all students that they, too, now “bear witness” and are obligated to ensure that they work to prevent discrimination and intolerance in their own lives.
In a 2009 commencement speech, Elie Weisel wrote, “Never be indifferent. One of my mottos has been that the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference…You will learn that you can do something. You can, even for one person.”