Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center Honors Seth Altman for Outstanding Leadership
The YHS Teacher Leads Holocaust and Twentieth Century Genocide Course
Mr. Seth Altman, a social studies teacher at Yorktown High School and member of the class of 1991, was honored with the Susan J. Goldberg Memorial Teacher Award by the Holocaust and Human Rights Education Center for his outstanding leadership in fighting bigotry and hatred through education. Mr. Altman teaches the Holocaust and 20th Century Genocide course at YHS, which he took as a student of the late Mrs. Sheila Burg, who introduced the course more than 30 years ago.

Mr. Altman sees the Holocaust not just as a tragic epoch in the history of the Jewish people, but as a case study of what can happen when society breaks down and a sense of human community is lost. “I am proud and honored to be included,” Mr. Altman said, “in an unfortunately small but keenly passionate group of teachers dedicated to preserving the memory of the Holocaust and imparting its human rights lessons to the leaders of tomorrow.” Mr. Altman hastened to add that the lessons of the Holocaust are by no means limited to the social studies classroom, and he pointed out how English teachers Suzanne Daria and Jill Goldowsky use the literature of the Holocaust to examine broad questions of human good and evil.

The Holocaust and 20th Century Genocide elective also examines events in Armenia, the Balkans, Rwanda and the Sudan through personal testimony, film, literature and art.

Alexandra Zapruder, author of the critically acclaimed Salvaged Pages: Young Writers’ Diaries of the Holocaust was a recent guest speaker in Mrs. Daria’s and Ms. Godowsky’s classes, where her presentation provoked sophisticated questions from the students.