About us/ Holocaust Importance
Holocaust
The Holocaust was unprecedented genocide, total and systematic, perpetrated by Nazi Germany and its collaborators, with the aim of annihilating the Jewish people. The primary motivation was the Nazis' anti-Semitic racist ideology. Between 1933 and 1941 Nazi Germany pursued a policy that dispossessed the Jews of their rights and their property, followed by the branding and the concentration of the Jewish population. This policy gained broad support in Germany and much of occupied Europe. In 1941, following the invasion of the Soviet Union, the Nazis and their collaborators launched the systematic mass murder of the Jews. By 1945 nearly six million Jews had been murdered.
A nationwide survey released on Sep 2020 showed "worrying lack of basic Holocaust knowledge" among adults under 40, including over 1 in 10 respondents who did not recall ever having heard the word "Holocaust" before.
The survey, touted as the first 50-state survey of Holocaust knowledge among millennials and Generation Z, showed that many respondents were unclear about the basic facts of the genocide. Sixty-three percent of those surveyed did not know that 6 million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust, and over half of those thought the death toll was fewer than 2 million.
The person behind this
My name is Enrique Fleischman and I am 16 years old. During my first year of high school, I realized that most of my classmates and friends had very little knowledge of the Holocaust. I wasn't sure if it was a religious issue (I attend a Catholic school) or just ignorance. I asked around and it became clear to me the need for education in this subject. We need to be better informed about the past to be able to prevent genocides like this in the future. I made my mission to bring resources to high schools to educate and bring holocaust awareness to younger generations.
Our services
HES provides free resources to educators—teachers, administrators, counselors and other practitioners—who work with children from middle school through high school. We provide information to the schools as well as coordinate Holocaust Survivors speakers. We help the schools figure out an easy way to communicate this important information to their students. Contact us!
Our help is completely free!