Holocaust Survivor

A 78-year-old Holocaust survivor and five eighth-grade students from Louisville asked the House Education Committee yesterday to expand teaching of the Holocaust in Kentucky classrooms.

House Joint Resolution 6, which passed the committee unanimously, would direct the education commissioner to develop a curriculum to be used voluntarily in schools -- although the students from St. Francis of Assisi say a Holocaust class should be made mandatory.

The Hill Folk Need to Know 

"Learning how painful the Holocaust was, Kentucky students will have a drive to never let it happen again," said Bennett Heine, 14.

Holocaust survivor Sandor Klein of Louisville said some in his family, including his parents, were killed at Auschwitz.

"I think it's a wonderful idea for the schools to be teaching the kind of thing that had been going on in Nazi Germany during the Holocaust," he said

State Education Commissioner

According to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum Web site, at least 21 states have laws that encourage the teaching of the Holocaust, which took the lives of 6 million European Jews during World War II.

Education Commissioner Jon Draud said the department could easily develop the material to be used for teaching. He said he hadn't thought about making a Holocaust course mandatory.