REMEMBER THE CHILDREN

Kids learn about the Holocaust with the help of Daniel, a fictional character.

Many kids are not informed about the true story of the Holocaust. Many schools don't teach about it, and parents don't like to bring it up.

Remember the Children: Daniel's Story was a traveling exhibit last spring at The Children's Museum to teach children ages 8 and up about the Holocaust - the time from 1933 to 1945 when Adolf Hitler and the Nazis from Germany killed millions of Jews because of the religion they practiced.

The exhibit focused on the life of Daniel, a fictitious Jewish boy who was living in Germany when the Nazis came to power. He was not a real person, but his story is based on the real experiences of children who lived at the time of the Holocaust.

At the start of the exhibit, a video tells about Daniel's life before, during and after the Holocaust. Daniel's family lived well before the Nazis came to power. Daniel's father owned a store, which provided his family with a nice house. When the Nazis prevented people from shopping at Jewish-owned stores, Daniel and his family were forced to move out of their comfortable home.

They moved into a ghetto, where they lived in one room with other relatives. Soon, Daniel's family was again forced out of what had become their "home" and were sent to a concentration camp, where the family became separated. After Daniel and his family got off the train, he and his father were directed to the right, to become laborers at the camp. His mother and sister were sent to the left - to the women's camp. He later learned that his mother and sister had been killed.

Also in the exhibit are two model rooms: One is the fancy living room in the home where Daniel and his family lived before Hitler came to power. The other is a small, cramped, dirty room in the ghetto where the family was forced to live. Throughout the exhibit are pictures of children made up of dots, with each dot standing for a child who was killed by the Nazis.

Kids' reactions

Children's Express recently talked with sixth-graders from School 105 and fourth-graders from St. Matthew Catholic School to see what they thought about Daniel's Story. We also interviewed two girls of Jewish heritage - Jennifer Pryweller, 12, and Julie Tzucker, 15 - to see how Daniel's Story compared to their knowledge of the Holocaust.

LIZ (St. Matthew): At the very beginning before I saw the exhibit and before I read the book, I didn't really know Hitler did this to people. I didn't even think it even existed. But when I went through the thing, I felt really sad because they were getting killed for no reason. And they wouldn't even let (Jews) walk on the street, which was really bad.

JASON (School 105): You just can't read (about) it and see what happened. (The exhibit) explained more and showed you what they went through.

JULIE: Jewish kids have learned about it all their lives. . . . It's a lot more meaningful to them because it was basically their people that it happened to and other kids think, "Oh, it was just them."

JENNIFER: I learned a lot more. I didn't know it was so bad.

JULIE: It was not as harsh as a lot of (exhibits) I've seen. I would have made it just a little more graphic just to show some of the things the Nazis did that were worse than what they showed.

RICKY (St. Matthew): When we took a tour and they showed us all those rooms, it felt like I was in one of those, and I could imagine actually living in one of those things for a couple of years.

If I were a slave, I would feel kind of trapped in and claustrophobic because there would be a lot of people around me, and I wouldn't know what to do.

NICK (St. Matthew): I think it is unfair to them because they couldn't help being Jewish. Then they got killed for it. BRANDON (St. Matthew): It's sad because you see people just that are Jewish go to all these concentration camps and get killed for nothing.

JULIE: It made me thankful for what I have. It taught me to never be prejudiced against anyone for anything.

JENNIFER: Jewish kids probably take it a little harder because they know it was their ancestors that it happened to.

BRANDON: I would be frightened to death because I wouldn't know what they were going to do to me. They could gas me, they could hold a firing squad and shoot me.

NICK: I would also feel scared because of not knowing what was going to happen next - if I was going to be killed or something else would happen.

K.C. (St. Matthew): If I were in that place, I would just run away and find a place where Jews would be allowed to do everything that they wanted to, just like every other regular person.

JENNIFER: I would have been really scared, and I would have just prayed and hoped that it was over soon.

K.C.: It's really scary that it might happen again, like somebody else might be as crazy as Hitler, just to kill people just because of what they look like.

RICKY: I feel this could happen again if somebody came over from Germany that stills calls himself neo-Nazi. They could be elected for president, and they could go out and kill everybody.

NATALIE, St. Matthew: I think, that if someone intends to start (another Holocaust), I would write to the president and tell him that "Hey, you better get over there and tell them not to, because remember what happened in World War II when Hitler got to carried away and started killing all those people."

CHEYENNE (School 105): I would feel real scared if it did happen here. And I wouldn't know what to do if it did happen to us. . . .

If it happened, what happens to one person should happen to everyone else, because we're all equal and we should all be treated the same way.

JULIE: There are a lot of anti-Semitic and racist people out there that just don't understand what is wrong about things like that. If people forget about it, it can happen again.

CHEYENNE: I think we should stop hating people and love each other because if we don't, what happened to Daniel in Germany, it would happen to us.

EDITED BY: Michelle Huser, 13; Kim Dexter, 13; Ilene Potasnik, 15