Holocaust lesson lifelong mission for Las Vegan

Friday, July 20, 2001 | 11:18 a.m.

When Edythe Katz Yarchever was in the seventh grade at Thomas Edison Junior High School in Boston, her teacher ordered her to stand up in class and explain to everyone why she took an unscheduled day off from school.

Nervously, the youngster, one of only three Jewish children in her class, explained that it was, in her faith, an important holiday that her parents felt needed to be observed at home with family.

The teacher then reminded Edythe in front of the class that her two Jewish classmates and the lone Jewish teacher on staff all went to school on the day in question.

"What she didn't say was that the other two Jewish children were afraid to take the day off and that the Jewish teacher would have been fired if she did not report to school that day," said Yarchever, now 81.

She has made a career of putting an end to such insensitivities, at least in her little corner of the world -- the Clark County School District. In the late 1970s she instituted the Holocaust education program that recently received from the Nevada Legislature its $75,000 biannual funding.

"The Holocaust is not just a historical tragedy where 6 million Jews were systematically murdered," Yarchever said. She said Holocaust education is important so students learn "about tolerance, respect and understanding other people's customs."

"To put it into perspective, 1.5 million of those killed during the Holocaust were children -- six times the number of students in the Clark County School District," said Yarchever, chairwoman of the Governor's Advisory Council on Education Relating to the Holocaust.

Today a required unit on the Holocaust is taught to all of the district's students in the fifth through 12th grades.

Yarchever started the Holocaust education program with the blessing of then-Superintendent Kenny Guinn, now the governor.

So important are the lessons of the Holocaust program that Guinn, who went on a budgetary belt-tightening crusade during the past Legislature, did not think about cutting the funding for the Holocaust education program that was authorized in Assembly Bill 520 and signed into law June 14.

"It is crucial that young people are well educated as to one of the most tragic chapters in world history," Guinn said. "Even though our budget is extremely tight, this is a project that should continue."

In addition, the program, which trains 200 to 300 local teachers yearly in the Holocaust, has set national standards on the subject.

"Our program has been so successful that the publishers of textbooks call us and ask what should be included about the Holocaust." said Karla McComb, the school district's director of Curriculum and Professional Development.

McComb said the flexibility in teaching the unit has added to its success, as teachers have been able to integrate the Holocaust into the teaching of other atrocities, from the persecution of the Armenians at the hands of the Turks in the 1920s to the recent "ethnic cleansing" in the former Yugoslavia.

"Sadly," Yarchever said, "because there was a Holocaust, kids learn the right things by learning about the wrong things that resulted from evil acts."