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Maggie PhillipsOctober 10, 2024
In the spring of 2023, 14 students from Xavier High School visited Auschwitz with staff and faculty as part of the school’s new Holocaust studies program (photo: Brian McCabe). In the spring of 2023, 14 students from Xavier High School visited Auschwitz with staff and faculty as part of the school’s new Holocaust studies program (photo: Brian McCabe).   

The teenage boys stopped in front of an exhibit on Aktion T4, the Nazi euthanasia program that killed anywhere from 70,000 to 200,000 disabled children and adults between 1939 and 1945. They wandered through the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York City on a clear June day, drawn to exhibits on the history of antisemitism in the United States and to video testimonies from survivors of Kristallnacht and Auschwitz—the human faces of a nearly century-old tragedy.

These boys were students at Xavier High School, a Jesuit school in lower Manhattan. But this was no ordinary field trip. They were there at the Battery Park museum as part of a Holocaust studies program instituted by Tom Maher, a Xavier alumnus. The museum, which describes itself as “a living memorial to the Holocaust,” allows visitors to immerse themselves in Jewish life both before and after the murder of six million Jews from 1933 to 1945, as well as to learn more about the atrocities of the Holocaust. Earlier that spring, six of the students had been to Poland to see various historical sites related to the Holocaust, culminating with a visit to Auschwitz.

The school’s extracurricular Holocaust studies program includes book and movie discussions, as well as opportunities for both domestic and international trips. Mr. Maher’s goal is to fight rising antisemitism through education—an urgent need according to F.B.I. hate crime statistics, which indicate that 10 percent of hate crimes in 2022 (the most recent available data) were anti-Jewish, second only to hate crimes against Black Americans.

Mr. Maher first visited Auschwitz in 2019. The trip touched him deeply, and it was at the forefront of his thoughts when the rising tide of antisemitism in the United States hit close to home. In 2022, The Boston Globe reported that police were investigating after swastikas appeared on a Jewish family’s lawn in Stoneham, Mass. “I said to myself, ‘This cannot be happening in our country,’” Mr. Maher told Xavier’s alumni publication, Xavier magazine, earlier this year. “‘Do people know what they are doing and the significance of what they are doing? This is so wrong.’ I needed to do something. But what?” Remembering the impact of history courses he had taken at the College of the Holy Cross, Maher settled on a Holocaust education program for his high school alma mater, funded by himself and his wife, Nancy.

Mr. Maher credits his Jesuit education with his passion to push back against antisemitism in the United States. “My Jesuit education is vitally important to who I am and how I think and what I try to do each day,” he said. When he read about the antisemitic graffiti in Stoneham, he saw a need to be a “man for others” and asked himself, “How can I help make this educational experience so that hopefully the next generation has a better understanding?” Mr. Maher said. “And there’s no better place than Xavier.”

In January 2023, he called Xavier’s president, Jack Raslowsky, to pitch his idea. Mr. Raslowsky was receptive, and by April, they were headed to Poland for a planning trip. The inaugural program trip was announced to the student body in November, and organizers were stunned when 78 students came forward to apply for the available 14 slots.

In March 2024, the 14 boys flew to Poland accompanied by Mr. Maher, Mr. Raslowsky and other faculty members and staff. The seven-day trip was a busy, and emotionally challenging, one. While the Auschwitz visit was the capstone, the boys also visited various sites of memory around Warsaw and Krakow. In Warsaw, they visited the Museum of the History of Polish Jews and the Warsaw Rising Museum and took a guided walking tour of the Old Town district and the Ghetto Wall. They also visited the Catholic All Saints Church, whose pastor had helped hide Jews inside the Warsaw Ghetto, and Nozyk Synagogue, Warsaw’s sole remaining Jewish worship site. In Krakow students attended a learning session with some college-age American Jews who were volunteers at the Jewish Community Center and saw the city’s Ghetto Heroes Square, with its Empty Chairs exhibit. Also on their itinerary was Oskar Schindler’s Factory Museum, familiar to many from the film “Schindler’s List.”

By the time they visited Auschwitz-Birkenau, the boys had a more comprehensive view of the Holocaust and its context. “How lucky was I to walk into this camp, under the ‘Arbeit macht frei’ sign, just as millions of others did, and simply walk out,” one student later reflected in Xavier magazine. “It was the birthplace of the worst mass genocide in human history, and I simply left. I didn’t know how to feel. Lucky, but almost guilty—why do I get to leave but so many didn’t? This moment will stay with me for the rest of my life.”

“They fully embraced the experience,” Mr. Maher said of the students on the Poland trip. “The magnitude of what they experienced, I think, had a transformative effect…they saw how antisemitism, if left unchecked, can have terrible consequences.”

Judeo-Christian Bonds

This year, the Mahers announced a $10,000 grant to fund summer professional development in the area of Holocaust studies for Xavier faculty members, and a second student trip to Poland is planned for October.

Due to capacity constraints, not all students can attend the Poland trip, but all are still eligible to take part in learning opportunities at the school.

“Having the domestic program available gives the opportunity to build understanding of Jewish culture space, and build that bond,” Mr. Maher said. “Obviously, that bond exists given our shared Judeo-Christian traditions.

Many of the students interviewed at the Museum of Jewish Heritage said that they were drawn to the Holocaust studies program because they had Jewish friends and family, or were observant Jews themselves. As they trickled out of the building, the boys seemed more somber than when they entered. Unusually for a large school group, they were not talkative. Mr. Raslowsky brought them together for a huddle to reflect on what they had seen that day. “The story of the Jewish people is so much bigger than the Holocaust,” he said. “Before and after.”

Mr. Raslowsky reminded the students of a visit they had taken to Temple Emanu-El in New York City a few months earlier. “There was something for me very good about starting in Jewish life and culture,” he said, “We miss that if we just jump to Holocaust studies.”

He had previously also accompanied some Xavier students to a Shabbat service at Temple Emanu-El, a large reform synagogue founded in 1845. Mr. Raslowsky recalled that the boys’ reactions to the service were characterized by grateful curiosity. Acknowledging that it can be challenging to encounter a new faith tradition, Mr. Raslowsky said, “There’s a familiarity that kids experienced.” Although there was no kneeling or Eucharist, “There’s something sacramental about the Torah scrolls,” he said. “I think kids make that connection.” He hopes that the Shabbat service served “as an entry for them into the mystery and wonder of God.”

The Jewish-Catholic link was made explicit on the March trip to Poland. In particular, All Saints Church, which sat on the edge of the Warsaw Ghetto that the Nazis created in 1940, played a key role in Polish Catholic resistance to the Holocaust. It was often a hiding place for Jewish children en route to temporary homes in the countryside, part of the work of a Catholic nurse named Irina Sendler.

We are joined at the hip in terms of our traditions,” Mr. Maher said of Jews and Catholics. We were grafted onto the covenant,” said Mr. Raslowsky. “We cannot separate ourselves from the Jewish faith, nor should we.

The students on the Poland trip in the spring agreed that familiarity with Judaism and Jews was essential to combating antisemitism.

“Many people have no relationship to the issue,” Owen Cahill, a current senior, told Xavier magazine. “This is important when trying to educate people, because it is hard to force someone to pay attention to something they care nothing about. Instead of trying to get people to share a certain opinion, it is more important that I am able to inform people just a little bit and maybe inspire them to take up their own interest in the fight against antisemitism.”

“Sympathy and empathy are so important,” said Henry Byrne, another student on the trip. He said a powerful moment for him was the response the Auschwitz tour guide gave them in response to a question someone posed at the end of their visit: “What’s next?”

The answer the guide gave stayed with Mr. Bryne. He said she was concerned about what he called “the lack of sympathy and empathy that happened in the Holocaust,” something he said “is what we see right now with the Israel and Palestine conflict. And if this doesn’t change, then acts could repeat again.”

The year 2023 was the 80th anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising, and January 2025 marks 80 years since the liberation of Auschwitz. To people born in the 21st century, World War II, its causes and its aftermath can seem very far away. Both Mr. Maher and Mr. Raslowsky noted that while Catholic higher education institutions offer Jewish-Catholic and Holocaust studies programs, there are not as many initiatives among Catholic high schools. “We also hope that it is an invitation to other institutions,” Mr. Raslowsky said, “particularly among the Jesuit institutions.”

Xavier is a diverse high school. Forty-three percent of the student body are students of color. Mr. Raslowsky estimates that last year, 30 out of around 900 students came from Jewish families, and the student body includes Muslims as well.

The metaphor of Jews as the “canaries in the cultural coal mine”—what begins as antisemitism quickly spreads to other minorities—is included in the Xavier Holocaust program. The diversity of the school is one reason why Mr. Raslowsky feels an urgent need to particularly address antisemitism.

“The work is to stop Jewish hate—and to stop all hate,” he said. “How do we beat swords into plowshares?” Referring to what he calls “a biblical mandate” to work for peace, Mr. Raslowsky said that the Holocaust studies program “is giving us an exclusive way to live it out, and to move to the point of more explicitly working against antisemitism, more deliberately understanding the experience of our Jewish brothers and sisters, and by extension, other other faith traditions. To be called to our best selves.”

An Urgent Issue

One year from Hamas’s attack on Jewish civilians at the Nova Festival in Israel on Oct. 7, 2023, Mr. Maher feels that Xavier’s work in Holocaust studies takes on particular urgency.

“October 7th is an important reason why we must remember, “ said Mr. Maher. “We must experience a trip like this so that we can bear witness to the horrific time in our world where six million Jews were murdered, and we can never forget.”

During the program’s inaugural year, Mr. Raslowsky said that while the Oct. 7 attack was a topic of conversation, it was not explicitly addressed by the program. “I think we felt, maybe rightly, maybe wrongly, that year one was laying the groundwork,” he said. “So students are in a position to enter into conversation more deliberately” as they see antisemitism being normalized in the media. He cited as an example Tucker Carlson’s controversial interview in September with the podcasterDarryl Cooper, whose comments on the show and online appeared to indicate sympathy for Nazi ideology.

“Insidious antisemitism can, and clearly has in the past, become pervasive antisemitism,” said Mr. Maher, “and an existential threat if not rooted out through education and a commitment to stand steadfast against hate and discrimination in all forms and in all places.”

“Now that we have a year under our belt,” said Mr. Raslowsky, “I think part of [our] responsibility is to engage more directly in this, in the antisemitism conversation and in active work.”

Correction, Oct. 21: The caption for the photo for this story initially incorrectly listed the number of students who attended the trip to Auschwitz with Xavier High School; it was 14 students in total.

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