Jefferson School District marks International Holocaust Remembrance Day
RIGBY, Idaho (KIFI)- Rigby and Madison High Schools brought their Holocaust and pre AP English classes together Thursday, to mark International Holocaust Remembrance Day, and hear from a woman whose parents survived.
Elaine Culbertson told the story of her mother, who was the only person in her family to survive Auschwitz.
"My grandmother and the children, were among the people who were gassed on arrival, but my mother didn't understand that right away when she got to her barracks, and I'll talk about that in a minute when she asked people, 'Where is my mother?' and the prisoners in the barracks, people who had been there for a while, pointed to the smoke from the crematorium and said, 'That's where your mother is.'" Culbertson said.
Culbertson spends her time talking about the Holocaust and educating others.
The event was put on by Rigby student Craig Porter, for his senior project
Porter says he was originally looking at doing a fundraiser for the Holocaust program.
"I was looking at different seminars and stuff, and I came upon, the US Holocaust memorial page where you could sign up to have a Holocaust survivor like zoom in with your class," Porter said. "So that kind of inspired me to start talking with Mr. Johnson, Mr. Thomas, about should we, could we do this? Like, could we get a survivor to come in and speak to our class?"
Laron Johnson, Porter's teacher and who Porter is a TA for, says it's more important than ever for everyone to learn about the Holocaust.
"We are now we're losing our Holocaust survivors at such a rate," Johnson said. "We always look at, you know, the next generation needs to tell the story... And I know it's a cliche, but we always say history repeats itself and it does. So if we can ingrain thousands of students what the seed of deep morality and question when bad things happen, that's what we're doing. So these kids knowing right from wrong is just something that I can't even describe. They do see more light than anybody out there, and I'm so proud of the students here at Rigby High School."
Something which Porter agrees with.
 "I feel like it's just such a huge event in history that shouldn't be able to repeat itself," Porter said. "It's also besides that it just teaches us like I said in my speech earlier, everybody has a story and that's what kind of has just inspired me throughout this and particularly in the Holocaust. A lot of the stories are forgotten like at Yad Vashem, they have a bookcase with room for the millions of stories that come, and most of them are empty, and it's just inspired me to pursue the study of the Holocaust."
