Holocaust Museum opens at Miramar school

It is intentionally dark, hot and uncomfortable in Portable 520 at Everglades High School in Miramar. Over the past three months, students have turned the portable into a permanent Holocaust Museum, and they want all senses to be affected when guests walk in.

“We want the atmosphere to be exactly what it was like during the Holocaust,” said Bruce Klasner of Davie, who teaches a History of the Holocaust course at the school.

The Everglades High School Holocaust Museum and Tolerance Center was officially dedicated May 9 during a ceremony that included Holocaust survivors and poetry readings by students. The museum was built to educate students throughout Broward County about the atrocities of World War II. The museum is filled with projects and exhibits created, donated and made entirely by the students.

The museum will be open to all students in Broward County.

“I wanted to learn how to prevent this cataclysmic event from happening again,” said Kyle Ali, 16, a 10th-grader who wore a version of the striped uniform many victims were forced to wear in Nazi concentration camps, including the yellow Star of David.

The students said they are hopeful that the museum will serve as a format to preserve and protect the world from future genocides and atrocities. It is laid out in chronological order of Nazi history, beginning with exhibits on Nazi policy and law, the Nazis rise to power, the Hitler Youth and then moves through atrocities like Kristallnacht, the Warsaw Ghetto and the deportation of Jews in cramped and airless train cattle cars. The doors slide shut on the train exhibit, giving guests a sense of the suffocation and isolation victims felt.

Further on are exhibits of shoes, clothes and suitcases the victims were forced to remove when they arrived at the camps, a wood-slatted concentration bunk bed and a replica of a gas chamber, with the shower heads that dispensed the gas and fingernail scratches on the walls.

“When they would gas people, it was lethal and the people would scratch the walls because they were desperate to get out,” said Laura Gonzalez, 17, of Miramar.

Joe Sachs, Klasner’s cousin, is a survivor of the Holocaust. The 85-year old was just 13 when most of his family perished in Nazi death camps. He spends his time going to schools, and talking about his experiences so younger generations never forget.

“I do it to make sure these youngsters create a better world, a world that I did not experience," said Sachs, who lives in Sunny Isles. “I want them to learn it not just from the books, but from the experience of individuals who were there.”

Paul Fetscher, principal of Everglades High School, spoke at the dedication and said he was most impressed by the diversity of the students who worked on the museum.

“I want everyone to look at the faces of the kids. They are all different and they are all here,” he said.

Klasner said it is that younger generation that can best carry on the message of tolerance.

“I want our students to understand they have the responsibility to change the world,” he said.