ࡱ> OLP[ <:bjbj 4Lΐΐ2+EEEEEYYY8,Y.z EEE   dEE   Щ,vY.0.,P!P!P!E .P! :  Remarks by Sara J. Bloomfield Prague Holocaust Assets Conference, June 2009 As the USHMM thinks about Holocaust education in the 21st C, we are mindful of the need to be relevant to an increasingly diverse American public but also that teaching the Holocaust should not be just about facts and statistics but about meaning. In our 16 years of experience, we have learned that the debate about the universal vs. particular turned out to be a false and unnecessary one. Good Holocaust education teaches the particular history of the Holocaust and does so in ways that help people easily understand its universal lessons. We have also learned that good Holocaust education can be meaningful, influential and enduring. In order to do this, it is necessary to think carefully about whom you are educating, why and how. Training every single teacher you can find may sound great but may not be the best utilization of resources. Over the past few years, the Museum has developed a more strategic approach to education. First, with respect to secondary school teachers, we have decided to invest our resources primarily, but not exclusively, in those truly exceptional teachers who are committed to both Holocaust education and the profession of education for the long term. Harnessing their expertise and dedication, they become extensions of the Museum and are deployed as leaders in their school systems and communities, training other teachers and serving as an on-site, permanent resource for them. But today I want to talk about another important aspect of our work. As we have developed our programs at the Museum, we have gone back to Holocaust history itself, which began not with mass murder but with gradual social collapse in a highly advanced, educated society. The Holocaust was made possible because the elites, the professions and the citizenry all acquiesced in their roles and responsibilities upholding democratic values. And that is the basis of our programming. So we see our teacher training model as a way to help shape an informed and engaged citizenry. Likewise we have developed a variety of programs for the professions. Our goal is that the professions that safeguard society will understand the lessons of the Holocaust and the implications for their own roles and responsibilities and act on them. Let me share with you one model. Our program for law enforcement. In 1998 Charles Ramsey, the new police chief of Washington, DC visited the Museum at the suggestion of the Anti-Defamation League. He found it a deeply moving experience not only as a human being, but also as a law enforcement officer. During the course of his tour, Chief Ramsey discovered to his great surprise many photographs with police officersand that once ordinary law enforcement officials had a role in the Holocaust. Ramsey was also surprised to see that the looks of fear and intimidation on concentration camp victims faces in images bore a resemblance to expressions he had observed on some of the people on the streets he had encountered in the line of duty. As he looked at them he realized that at times he himself had judged people by their dehumanized appearance. Chief Ramsey had been brought to the Washington Police Department to address what the media had called a pattern of reckless and indiscriminate shootings on the part of the local police throughout the 1990s. He was looking for ways to increase his officers understanding of their relationship to the people they served and their role as protectors of the Constitution and individual liberties. Because of these unexpected connections with a history he had initially thought to be very much separate from contemporary life, Ramsey thought we could help with the huge challenge he faced. He asked the Museum and ADL to create a program for police recruits, which was almost immediately expanded to include all officers on the force, a program we ultimately called Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons of the Holocaust. We agreed and shortly thereafter groups of 35-50 police officers began coming to the Museum twice a week. There were many discussions among Museum and ADL staff about how to structure the program. We knew it was important that the officers have a good grounding in the history of the Holocaust, so an in-depth tour of the Museums permanent exhibition was core to the program. We also developed a program component that dealt specifically with the role of law enforcement during the Holocaust. One of our earliest experiments used biographies of law enforcement officials who had taken different paths during the 1930s and 1940s as a launching point for discussion. The discussion revolved around the officials career paths and choices as well as an exploration of what choices were actually open to them and what consequences they would have faced had they made other choices. At first this seemed like an effective activity as the officers debated the motivations behind different decisions as well as the pressures brought to bear on the individuals at different points in time. All this seemed very recognizable to the officers many of whom acknowledged how difficult it can be to stand up to pressures and motivations that can lead one to behavior that runs counter to deeply held values. However, several made a leap from this conclusion to decide that the lesson of the program was that they should begin following their own conscience in carrying out their duties. Some officers determined that they should avoid, for example, protecting the rights of groups they did not agree with, or protest by calling in sick or even take up arms against those they felt were carrying out immoral acts such as abortion doctors. This was not the result we expected or desired. While law enforcement professionals have the right to disobey orders that they believe to be illegal, the purpose of this training was not to teach officers that they needed to refuse to carry out orders or enforce laws. After all, the program was initiated to create a more responsible police force dedicated to protecting the local community while at the same time upholding the law and respecting the rights of individual citizens. We recognized that we needed to revamp this part of the program. So, we dropped the biographies. Instead we focused on the role of the profession during the 1930s and 1940s and the incremental changes that drew ordinary police many of whom had not voted for the Nazis - into the Third Reichs agenda. We did this through a close examination of a various photographs that show how a step-by-step series of changes in the nature of policing began in 1933 and culminated for some police in participation in deportations or in outright killings. For example, we begin with a photo taken soon after Hitler assumed power in 1933 that shows an older police officer patrolling the streets of Berlin. Hes doing ordinary police work, most likely covering the exact same beat he walked a couple of months before in the Weimar Republic. What is different is that he is now accompanied by a young member of the SA. The Washington officers understand this pairing implicitly: the older officer, a police professional, knows the community and knows his profession. Even though the content of his job responsibilities hasnt changed, its meaning has: he lends legitimacy and expertise to the new order. Another image, taken a few years later, shows a large group of police arriving in a Berlin neighborhood in a truck. Officers also understand this photograph: its a raid and, given the show of force, there must be armed and dangerous criminals. But in actuality the raid, another typical police assignment, is on a Jewish neighborhood where no crime has been committed. Policing has now been directly harnessed to the Nazis anti-Semitic goals. In addition to this deconstruction of the ways policing was corrupted during the Third Reich, ADL developed a segment to conclude the program that examines the nature of policing in a democratic society. The discussion begins with the facilitator asking the officers to list stereotypes of police. Over the many years of the program, the officers always have the same answers: racist, abusive, trigger happy, uneducated, brutal, etc. The officers are then asked how they would like to be perceived. They always respond: professional, fair, unbiased, compassionate, courageous, protectors, etc. Later in the program, we ask the officers to define what makes law enforcement professionals in the United States today different from police under the Nazis. Both performed certain basic police dutiesenforcing laws, gathering information, deterring crime, arresting suspects, writing reports, etc. We specifically ask the officers, What prevents you from engaging in the kind of abuses so comprehensively documented in the Museum? Over the course of the discussion that follows, the participants recognize that the core values of American law enforcement, which they listed earlierprofessional, fair, unbiased, etc.are derived from the American Constitution, define their relationship to the American people and help insure that members of their profession do not abuse their power. Through the juxtaposition of this discussion of the role of law enforcement in our nation today, with an examination of the Holocaust and the abuse of power by police under Nazis, the officers come to a clearer understanding of the central role that their professional values play in insuring the strength of our democracy. From 1999-2001 we trained the entire Washington, DC Police force of some 4,500 officers. An independent investigation conducted by the U.S. Department of Justice at the end of this period found that serious use of force including shootings and canine bites decreased during the period without impairing the departments ability to fight crime. The number of canine bites decreased by 70% and the number of fatal shootings dropped from c. 16 per year to 4 in 1999 and 2 in 2000. The Justice Department report credited four factors for the change Revised firearms training; Improved hiring practices; Honest reporting; Law Enforcement and Society program Law Enforcement and Society has now been expanded to all the police departments in the Washington DC region, including Virginia and Maryland. We also train every new FBI agent. This model of leadership training has been developed for judges, prosecutors and the military. The success of the program is a result of several factors. First, a strong grounding in Holocaust history. Second, clarity of goals that made sense to all three partners - the Museum, the Anti-Defamation League, and the Washington, DC Metropolitan Police Department. This meant shaping the historical and contemporary segments of the program curriculum to contrast the role and values of policing during the Third Reich with those in our own democratic society. This allowed us to reaffirm the values that Chief Ramsey wanted to emphasize. And finally, the relevance of the content and the richness of the discussion - was enhanced when we shifted the emphasis of the curriculums content away from individual decision making on the part of exceptional actors during the Holocaust towards an examination of the role of ordinary street police in Nazi Germany. In conclusion, I would like to share with you part of what Chief Ramsey has said this program. The Holocaust didnt happen overnight, although there were major milestones Rather it was a gradual process of marginalizing, dehumanizing fellow human beings and of the larger community closing its eyes to the warning signs and eventually to the brutality. So today it is incumbent upon all of us, especially our police officers and other public officials, to always keep our eyes open for any warning signs of profiling, discrimination, unequal treatment. . And, it is incumbent upon us when we see those signs to step in and take action. Our vigilance and our commitment are probably more important than ever before, in this post 9/11 world of uncertainty and, yes, fear. True community policing does not define police officers as a line, thin, blue or otherwise. We are not now, nor should we ever be, something that divides and separates our communities. Rather, I like to think of the police as a thread, a thread that is woven throughout the communities we serve..indeed a thread that holds together the very fabric of democracy and freedom If the police begin to unravel, then our very democracy begins to unravel as well. That imagemuch more than the thin blue line conceptcaptures the true role of the police in protecting and preserving a free society.      PAGE \* MERGEFORMAT 2 NUZ( 1 2 [ e " . Y    & ( 3 5 ? 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