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SHARE OUR STORIES:
THE ART OF BEARING WITNESS
Share Our Stories: The Art of Bearing Witness is a virtual exhibit, showcasing student artwork created during the 2024–2025 school year through Holocaust Museum LA’s Share Our Stories program. This year, the program reached nine schools and engaged over 1,500 students. The exhibition features a curated selection of pieces from four participating schools, offering a glimpse into how the next generation interprets the past to shape a more just and compassionate future.
Share Our Stories is an arts education initiative of Holocaust Museum LA that connects Holocaust Survivors and their descendants with students from Title I schools across Los Angeles. Through museum gallery exploration, artifact-based learning, classroom visits, personal dialogue, and reflective art workshops, the program invites students to explore how history shapes individual lives. It bridges generational gaps while building meaningful cross-cultural connections between the Jewish community and other marginalized or underrepresented groups.
As students engage with Survivors’ stories, they are encouraged to reflect on their own identities, make personal connections, and express themselves through art, deepening their understanding of art as a catalyst for change. The program creates powerful, hands-on experiences rooted in historical memory and the transformative power of storytelling. Through their artwork, students respond to history in deeply personal ways—honoring memory, grappling with the present, and imagining a dignified and humane world.
There are three primary components to the Share Our Stories program:
A customized, docent-led tour of Holocaust Museum LA, designed to deepen, reinforce, and complement classroom learning through powerful on-site experiences that center around artifacts and inquiry-based learning.
A dialogue with a Holocaust Survivor or a descendant, offering a firsthand account of survival and the lasting impact of memory passed between generations.
A reflective art workshop, in which students draw connections between their own lives and the experiences of a Holocaust Survivor or descendant, using creative expression to explore shared themes of memory, identity, and resilience.
Holocaust Museum LA gratefully acknowledges the Max H. Gluck Foundation for their generous support, which makes it possible for classes to participate in the Share Our Stories program at no cost.
THE ART OF BEARING WITNESS
Students were asked to reflect on their art pieces, offering viewers a lens into their creative process, inspiration, and intention. These translations of visual thinking into verbal expression reveal how students envision applying the lessons of the past to shape the world they aspire to build.
GRIFFITH STEAM MAGNET MIDDLE SCHOOL
6th – 8th Grade Students
Echoes of Strength: From Memory to Meaning
Students in grades 6–8 from Griffith STEAM Magnet Middle School made their annual visit to Holocaust Museum LA, where they met Holocaust Survivor, Thomas Jacobson, who was one of the youngest passengers on the SS St. Louis. After fleeing Nazi Germany for Cuba, the ship carrying over 900 Jewish refugees was turned away and sent back to Europe. He eventually made his way to Milwaukee, Wisconsin, where he became a prominent human rights lawyer—representing major civil rights leaders in Milwaukee in the 1960s and later the victims of Jeffrey Dahmer.
Inspired by his strength, resilience, and commitment to justice, the students created symbols to represent hope and strength in their own lives, in a project entitled Echoes of Strength: From Memory to Meaning. They were challenged to design an original symbol or adapt an existing one, drawing inspiration from both Jewish and Hispanic traditions. Each symbol reflects a shared resilience and the power of hope across communities and cultures.
JAMES A. GARFIELD HIGH SCHOOL
10th Grade World History Students
From Darkness Comes Light
The entire 10th-grade class at Garfield High School visited Holocaust Museum LA to deepen the learning they had begun in the classroom. After touring the museum, students engaged in dialogue with someone connected to Holocaust history. The first group met Lou Fogelman, a child survivor from the Netherlands who was smuggled out of Hollandsche Schouwburg, the “Jewish Theater,” where Jews were detained before deportation and then placed in hiding. The second group heard from Gary Peskin, a second-generation descendant of a survivor, who spoke about his father’s experiences surviving the Holocaust in Poland.
During the art reflection activity, students worked with scratch paper—black paper that reveals color when scratched with a stick. They were asked to create word art that incorporated symbolism. Word art is a visual representation of text that uses letters, numbers, symbols, and words to express a message. This form of expression, known as conceptual art or conceptualism, focuses on the idea behind the work. Students used this technique to reflect on how they persevered through difficult times, creating powerful pieces rooted in inner strength and determination.
Through discussion, the students decided to title the project From Darkness Comes Light—a celebration of their enduring spirit, focusing on hope and growth rather than dwelling on hardship.
LASHON ACADEMY
6th Grade Students
Fragments and Feelings
Sixth-grade students from Lashon Academy had the opportunity to meet and hear from the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Amanda Markowitz. In her presentation, she shared how her family history shaped her identity, offering personal insight into the impact of intergenerational memory, traditions, and values.
Inspired by her story, students reflected on their own identities through Fragments and Feelings, an abstract self-portrait art activity. Rather than relying on traditional or literal representations, they were encouraged to break away from conventional forms and express themselves through color, texture, symbolism, and emotion. Their artwork became a creative exploration of the people, experiences, and feelings that make them who they are—highlighting the power of self-expression and the connections between personal history, memory, and identity.
LASHON ACADEMY
7th – 8th Grade Students
In Safe Hands
During their visit to Holocaust Museum LA, students from Lashon Academy met with one of two child survivors of the Holocaust: Suzanne Reyto, born in Budapest, Hungary, just six days before the Nazi invasion, and Henry Slucki, born in Paris, France. Both shared powerful personal stories about the crucial role their parents played in saving them during the rise of Nazi Germany and throughout their immigration journeys to new lives in the United States, Australia, and beyond. Their testimonies gave students a profound understanding of survival, love, and the extraordinary lengths families went to protect one another.
As part of their reflection, students learned about the hamsa—a hand-shaped symbol found in various cultures and religions throughout the Middle East, including Judaism and Islam. Traditionally representing protection, blessings, and good fortune, the hamsa served as a meaningful entry point for personal expression.
Students were then invited to design their own hamsas, in a project called In Safe Hands, drawing inspiration from a person, place, or thing that gives them a sense of safety, good health, or luck. Their artwork became a blend of cultural learning and personal reflection, celebrating the people and values that offer them strength and comfort in their own lives.
TOLUCA LAKE ELEMENTARY SCHOOL
5th Grade Students
What I Carry With Me
The entire 5th grade class at Toluca Lake Elementary School read The Children of Willesden Lane (Young Readers Edition) by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen. This true story follows 14-year-old Lisa Jura, a Jewish girl and gifted pianist whose life was upended when Hitler’s rise to power threatened her home in pre-war Vienna. With only one Kindertransport ticket available, Lisa’s parents made the heartbreaking decision to send her to safety in London, where she lived in a home for refugee children on Willesden Lane. Separated from her family, Lisa found comfort and strength in her music as her source of hope through uncertain times.
Inspired by Lisa’s story, students decorated their own luggage tags—a symbol of the Kindertransport—illustrating something that brings them comfort, joy, or peace, just as the piano did for Lisa. Titled What I Carry With Me, this reflective art project invited students to connect the history of the Holocaust and the Kindertransport to their own lives, exploring the resilience of the human spirit and the power we each hold to uplift others.
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