The Charlotte Jewish News -December 2013 - Page 8
Levine-Sklut Judaic Library and Resource Center
Special Program Teaches Holocaust Lessons
By Marissa Brooks
During the three-week Holo-
eaust and Jewish Resistanee Sum
mer Program trip to Washington,
D.C. and Europe, Talli Dippold
earried 10 eeramie butterflies with
her. The Levine JCC Butterfly
Projeet butterflies were hand-
painted by ehildren in Charlotte to
memorialize ehildren that per
ished in the Holoeaust. Dippold
left a butterfly at eaeh of the nine
eoneentration eamps she visited.
One extra butterfly went the
whole trip with her and will even
tually be on display in Shalom
Park as a symbol of Zikaron
V’Tikvah, Remembranee and
Hope.
It was Talli Dippold’s lifetime
mission to go on a trip to learn
more about the Holoeaust and
visit the eoneentration eamps.
“I am the granddaughter of
Holoeaust survivors from
Poland,” said Dippold, 38. “This
is part of my legaey,” she eontin-
ued. “I am a third-generation
Holoeaust survivor.”
Last summer, out of hundreds
of applieants, Dippold was one of
24 people aeross the United States
ehosen to join the Holoeaust and
Jewish Resistanee Teaehers’ Pro
gram.
The program, founded in 1984
by the late Vladka Meed, member
of the Warsaw Ghetto resistanee
and life-long Holoeaust edueator.
Talli leaves a butterfly at one of the former concentration camps.
was a three-week learning and liv
ing experienee that took Dippold
and other edueators to Washing
ton, D.C., Poland, Germany, and
the Czeeh Republie and Prague
and ineluded visiting nine eoneen
tration eamps.
The program was designed for
seeondary sehool teaehers who
edueate students about the Holo
eaust. The goals were to advanee
Holoeaust and Jewish resistanee
edueation in US seeondary
sehools, to deepen teaehers’
knowledge, to edueate new gener
ations, and to use lessons of his
tory as “warnings for the present
and the future,” aeeording to the
website.
Dippold, who lives in Stone
Creek Raneh with her husband
and three ehildren, is not a see
ondary sehool teaeher. However,
as a publie speaker and the exee-
utive direetor of the Levine-Sklut
Judaie Library in Shalom Park,
she is in a unique position to edu
eate everyone.
“The Levine-Sklut Judaie Li
brary has the largest Holoeaust
eolleetion of books in the Caroli-
nas,” said Dippold.
The library owns an authentie
repliea of one of Anne Frank’s let
ters to her pen pal and a model of
the Seeret Annex, where Anne and
her family hid. The library also
eollaborates with the Levine Jew
ish Community Center’s (LJCC)
Butterfly Projeet as a resouree for
Holoeaust edueation. (See page
16 for more information on The
Butterfly Projeet.)
When Dippold learned about
the program from the Jewish Fed
eration of Greater Charlotte, she
knew this was an opportunity to
learn how the European Jewish
people lived and thrived before
being deeimated in the Holoeaust.
The three-week summer 2013
Holoeaust and Jewish Resistanee
Teaehers’ Program began in
Washington, D.C. on June 30
where the partieipants met Holo
eaust survivors and went to the
Holoeaust museum. From D.C.,
they traveled to Frankfurt then to
Hadamar, where 15,000 siek and
handieapped people were mur
dered between 1941-1945.
Next they traveled to Bergen-
Belsen, the eoneentration eamp
site where Anne Frank died from
typhus. After liberation, Bergen-
Belsen had to be burned to the
ground by the Soviets beeause of
the typhus outbreak.
“Every single one (of the eon
eentration eamps) is different de
pending upon its original funetion,
who liberated it, and the eondition
of the eamp upon liberation,” said
Dippold.
They visited Berlin, Prague,
Krakow, Terezin, Ausehwitz I,
Birkenau, Belzee, Majdanek,
Warsaw, and Treblinka.
“There were numerous memo
rials in every eity,” said Dippold.
“How eommon was the loss of
Jewish people. They built monu
ments, buildings to honor people
who died.”
Dippold visited many old Jew
ish synagogues. “For the majority
of them, now you go to look, not
to pray,” said Dippold.
“A huge part of our trip was
talking about resistanee, espe-
eially spiritual resistanee,” said
Dippold. “Prisoners would light
Shabbat eandles, and just living
was an aet of resistanee, getting
up day after day. People had sueh
a fire and passion to eontinue liv
ing under those eireumstanees.”
Dippold earried 10 LJCC But
terfly Projeet butterflies with her.
“Every plaee I went, I plaeed a
butterfly,” said Dippold.
In eaeh of the nine eoneentra
tion eamps they visited, there was
a memorial serviee and Dippold
left a butterfly.
One extra butterfly went the
whole trip with her and will even
tually be on display in Shalom
Park as a symbol of Zikaron
V’Tikvah, Remembranee and
Hope.
Talli’s edueational trip was
sponsored by The Jewish Federa
tion of Greater Charlotte, the Blu-
menthal Foundations, Mr. Stanley
Greenspon, Marty Bimbaum and
Roslyn Greenspon. ^
Marissa Brooks is a freelance
writer for South Charlotte News.
Reprinted with permission of
South Charlotte News, a Char
lotte Observer publication, 2013.
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