Yesterday, the Forest Park Middle School 8th grade class took a field trip out to Skokie to see the Illinois Holocaust Memorial Museum. The 8th grade has been studying the Holocaust for the last month. The students had just finished reading the book “Night” by Elie Weisel, the Nobel Peace Prize winning author. Students were able to ask the docents questions and answer questions as they were lead through the museum looking at displays from the rise of Nazi power through to the Nuremburg Trials at the war’s end. Students were also able to experience a temporary exhibit on the capture of Adolf Eichmann, one of Hitler’s right hand men. This exhibit is only on display in three places in the world, one of which is the Illinois Holocaust Museum. As we left the museum the students all had a deeper understanding of the time period and all were straining to see the tree in the parking lot that came from a cutting from a tree that stood in the Theresienstadt Ghetto, brought to the museum by one of the survivors.
