Rock Falls High School to host Mobile Museum of Tolerance in May
Apr. 29—ROCK FALLS — Rock Falls Township High School will host a unique educational experience as the Mobile Museum of Tolerance rolls into town.
The traveling museum, which will not be open to the public, will be stationed at RFHS, 101 12th Ave., from Monday, May 5, through Thursday, May 8. The museum will also visit Rock Falls Middle School, 1701 12th Ave., on Friday, May 9.
The MMOT is the first-of-its-kind free traveling education center, equipped with state-of-the-art technology and interactive programming designed to fight antisemitism and all forms of hate, according to a news release. It was developed by the Simon Wiesenthal Center and modeled after the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles.
RFHS and Middle School students and teachers will take part in immersive workshops focused on digital literacy, identifying and combating hate online and in person, and understanding the Holocaust within historical and modern contexts.
Each session will be led by a licensed Illinois educator using interactive technology and facilitated dialogue to engage participants in meaningful discussions about tolerance, empathy and human rights, according to the release.
The MMOT's curriculum is endorsed by the Illinois State Board of Education and aligns with state learning standards. The workshops are also part of a broader partnership with the Illinois Department of Human Rights' Commission on Discrimination and Hate Crimes.
The MMOT also travels to libraries, colleges, synagogues, churches, police stations and community centers throughout the state.
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Axios
2 days ago
- Axios
From New Orleans to Normandy: Honoring Louisiana's WWII heroes
As the nation remembers D-Day on Friday's 81st anniversary, a dwindling number of World War II veterans remain with us. About 300 WWII vets are still living in Louisiana, according to the latest figures from the Department of Veterans Affairs. The big picture: About 16.4 million Americans served in WWII, but only about 66,100 were still living as of September 2024, per the VA's projections. "We have the enormous responsibility to ensure that the memories and experiences of the war will not be lost as those who lived through it leave this world," said Stephen J. Watson, president and CEO of the National WWII Museum in New Orleans, in a statement. Zoom out: The museum is welcoming back WWII veterans as part of its commemoration events. It had an overnight display Thursday with 2,510 candle luminaria to honor the Americans who died on D-Day. At 6:30am Friday, there's a remembrance gathering to mark the moment the invasion of Normandy began. About 25 WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors will open the museum at 8:50am Friday to a hero's welcome. The main ceremony, which is also free, starts at 11am. Full list of events. Meanwhile, it's also the museum's 25th anniversary. The venue opened in 2000 as The National D-Day Museum. It was housed in a single exhibition hall and dedicated to telling the stories of the Americans who participated in the amphibious invasion. Today, the museum spans seven pavilions and has immersive exhibits and an expansive collection of artifacts. Fun fact: The Higgins boats used on D-Day were designed and built in New Orleans. Fewer than 10 original boats remain in existence. President Dwight D. Eisenhower called Andrew Higgins "the man who won the war for us" thanks to his namesake landing craft.
Yahoo
5 days ago
- Yahoo
'D-Day veterans plaque is a wonderful honour'
A plaque unveiled at Gold Beach in Normandy to remember Surrey's D-Day veterans is a "wonderful honour", the family of one of the late soldiers say. The blue plaque reading "Surrey Square – the spiritual home of all Normandy Veterans", was installed in Arromanches on the French coast to remember those who took part in the Normandy landings on 6 June, 1944. Family members of Surrey's D-Day veterans joined in 81st anniversary commemorations on Friday morning as a bagpiper played to remember the fallen soldiers from the military operation. Ian Allen, whose father-in-law Fred Lee took part in the D-Day landings, said the plaque was a "wonderful honour" for those who fought on the Normandy beaches. He added: "I was fortunate enough to come over with the Surrey Normandy Veterans who used to come here every 6 June. "The plaque all happened very quickly. I do get emotional." Mr Allen, who travelled to Arromanches with his wife Katrina to remember her father and the other Surrey veterans, said he had helped to bring over the former World War Two soldiers to Normandy for previous celebrations. Arromanches' D-Day museum has recently been replaced with a new multi-million euro building, leading to the current memorials being moved. The new plaque was installed alongside the relocated memorials. Mr Allen said that some of the army uniforms of those who had previously travelled over to Normandy were now kept in the new museum, adding he "can't help but be emotional when you walk past that". The D-Day landings, one of the biggest ever military operations, was one of the turning points for Allied victory on the Western Front. Follow BBC Surrey on Facebook, on X, and on Instagram. Send your story ideas to southeasttoday@ or WhatsApp us on 08081 002250. Handwritten notes reveal Churchill's penicillin concern ahead of D-Day 'Vital' young remember the past - Holocaust survivor Arromanches Museum
USA Today
5 days ago
- USA Today
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after attack: 'We are better than this'
Holocaust survivor burned in Boulder speaks after attack: 'We are better than this' "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars." Show Caption Hide Caption Boulder community honors attack victims, condemns antisemitism The Boulder Jewish Community Center hosted a vigil for community members to come and support victims of a fire-bomb attack. Barbara Steinmetz survived the Holocaust as a child, fleeing from one country to the next as her Jewish family was stripped of its citizenship. They left Italy for Hungary, then to France and finally Portugal before finding refuge outside of Europe in the Dominican Republic. The first five years of her life with her big sister Margaret and parents was a blur of escapes, never with anything more than what they could carry. The one thing that remained constant: their family stayed together. It's a message that resonates with her nearly 90 years later and why she was marching in Boulder on Sunday. She was part of a small group bringing attention to the Jewish hostages held by Hamas to bring them home when she was attacked. A man threw Molotov cocktails at the group, injuring 12 people. Steinmetz, 88, told NBC News earlier this week that she and other members of the group Run for Their Lives were peacefully demonstrating when they were attacked. "We're Americans. We are better than this,' she told the news outlet. They should be 'kind and decent human beings." Steinmetz spent much of her life trying not to talk about what her family endured. Her father's message to her was always to move to forward. In 1998, she sat down to share her story with the University of Southern California's Shoah project, which documents the lives of Holocaust survivors. In an interview stretching almost three hours, Steinmetz talked about her family's escape, the relatives who died in the war, and the lessons they learned. She was 61 when she did the Shoah interview, one of thousands of 52,000 stories recorded over eight years. 'Family is what's most important,' Steinmetz said. She was too young to remember much from her family leaving Italy in 1938 when Benito Mussolini stripped Jewish people of their citizenship at the direction of Adolf Hitler. What she remembers, she said in the interview, was an atmosphere of trauma. Boulder attack: Firebombing suspect Mohamed Soliman charged with 118 criminal counts Her father, who had run a hotel on the northern Italian coast after leaving Hungary, visited embassies and wrote letters to various countries to try to move his family as Hitler's power grew. Each time, their move was temporary. Each time, they brought only what they could carry. But each time, they stayed together. 'Things were not important, people are important. What you have in your brain and in your heart that is the only thing that's important,' she said. 'And that's totally transportable.' In the past few years, Steinmetz has told her family's story at Holocaust remembrance events and classrooms, libraries and churches. She wants people to understand history to understand that Jewish people are being targeted again. 'Hitler basically took (my father's) life, his dream away…. The rest of life was chasing, running, trying to make a living,' she said. The family eventually settled in Sosúa where the Dominican Republic Resettlement Association (DORSA) had established a refugee camp for Jewish people. Life was difficult there, she said, as her family and had to learn to build houses, farm the rocky terrain, and raise their families. Steinmetz and her sister, three years older, were soon sent to a Catholic school, where only the head nun knew they were Jewish. A nun used to let her change the clothes of the Baby Jesus figurine at the church, and for a few minutes each day, she felt like she had a doll. She remembers sleeping next to her sister, and crying inconsolably. 'I never cried again. Years and years and years later, when something happened, my mother and father died, I had a hard time crying. And to this day, I have a hard time crying,' she said. "It is just something I don't do.' The family didn't speak of these moves for years, she would say. "They couldn't help where they were living, it was the only thing they could do to stay alive." The family settled in Boston in 1945, and soon learned much of their family in Europe had died, some in the war, others after. The family would move several times again as her father found different jobs, and she and her sister began going to Jewish summer camps. It was there, she said, that she "fell into the Zionist spirit. I loved the feeling that there would be a state of Israel." She finally felt like she had a community, she said. "These were my people,"she said. "This group was very tight. I was very welcome there. It was a really important part of my life." Her life, she said, was shaped by the war. "It was an experience that affected everything we did," she said, lessons she and her husband, who died in 2010, passed to their three daughters. In all the years of moving from place to place, she remembers they never went to sleep without saying a prayer for their family in Europe, to "bless Aunt Virgie, Emra and Oscar and Pearl... our grandparents." When she met some of this family again in the mid 1950s, "I knew them. They had been part of my everyday life … they were part of my vocabulary." At the end of telling her story, of two hours and 54 minutes of mostly emotionless factual testimony, the interviewer for the Shoah project asks if there is anythingshe hopes people could take away from her story. "We need a broader picture of all of humanity," she said. "We need to educate ourselves and always need to be on top of what is going on in the world and be alert and be responsive to it." And it's why she continues to tell their story, to warn about antisemitism ― even as hate against Jews soars to historic levels. Just last year, Steinmetz showed up to a Boulder City Council meeting in support of her local Jewish community. A woman sat down next to Steinmetz, she recounted in a video interview in June 2024. The woman had a Palestinian flag and a sign that read, "from the river to the sea," a phrase that can be used to promote antisemitism. Steimetz turned to her and said: "Do you realize that that means you want to kill me? You want me destroyed?'" The woman just turned away. "Jews in Boulder and maybe Denver and probably in cities all around the world, are afraid of wearing their Jewish stars," Steinmetz said. People are taking down their mezuzahs so that no one will know that it's a Jewish house, she said. But in the following breath, Steinmetz rejected the notion that silence is ever an option. "It is up to each of us to say something, to say something and do something. 'You can say no; I'm a human being just like that other person. We are all humans.'"
