Both will join the Mandel Teacher Fellowship Program, which strives to develop a cadre of skilled secondary-school teachers who can serve as Holocaust education leaders in communities around the country.
Members of the Washington, D.C., museum’s education staff instruct the fellows on advanced historical and pedagogical issues dealing with the subject. The fellows are then expected to create outreach projects in their schools, communities or professional organizations.
Neuberg, a librarian and media specialist at Forestville’s El Molino High School, sees the museum as a gold mine of resources on the subject, but would like to see its educational tentacles further unfurled.
“I think the students that most need to learn about this are the students that are least likely to get to Washington, and if they do get there are least likely to spend time at the Holocaust museum,” says Neuberg, who is also chair of the Alliance for the Study of the Holocaust at Sonoma State University.
Neuberg has worked at El Molino since leaving his post as executive director of the Holocaust Center of Northern California in 1991. He served in that capacity for 8-1/2 years.
This year’s Mandel Teacher Fellowship Program participants, chosen from 120 applicants, have each taught Holocaust history for a minimum of five years. They will meet in Washington from August 9 to 14 for a summer institute and then reconvene in the capital the following spring for a follow-up program with museum staff.
Fellows may then apply for funds to support projects promoting Holocaust education; up to five projects will be given an average of $3,000 each. In all, the fellows’ formal relationship with the museum will last for a year, but many choose to remain in contact.
Past fellows of the program, now in its third year, have organized conferences, online magazines and other Holocaust publications following completion of the program.
Last year Frank Navarro, a teacher at Mountain View High School, was a Mandel fellow. With knowledge gleaned from the program, he developed “Facing History,” a Holocaust course for all grades of high school that he started teaching in September.
“Young people have a great hunger for this history,” Navarro says. “They really want to know about it.”
Navarro calls the Mandel Teacher Fellowship Program “tremendous.” The museum, he says, continues to help and support him in his teaching efforts.
“One of the things the museum has done is send me a series of articles on almost a monthly basis on everything from the Nuremberg Laws to the conflicting histories on Pope Pius,” he says. “That’s been very effective.”
With several El Molino teachers already interested in the Holocaust, Neuberg says, the school is ripe for the kinds of supplementation the Holocaust museum will provide.
“They’ll be giving us both intellectual and material support, books and things for the library, possibly software,” he says.
The tall, bearded Neuberg, 53, has been interested in the subject for as long as he can remember. Growing up Jewish on the south side of Chicago, “my friends were children of survivors, children of refugees. It got to be something I was interested in.”
“In some ways, I think [the Holocaust] is a window into the true nature of people,” he adds. “If you’re going to live in the world and raise children and try to make the world a better place, you should know what human nature is, what has been done.”
As an undergraduate in English literature at U.C. Berkeley and then a master’s candidate in creative writing at San Francisco State University, Neuberg found himself reading about the subject in depth.
In the 1970s, he taught a course on Holocaust literature at Santa Rosa Junior College.
A decade later, after stints as a park ranger and a reporter for the Santa Rosa Press-Democrat, his academic background, along with a knowledge of French, German, Yiddish and Hebrew, secured him the Holocaust Center position over 40 other applicants.
But despite dealing with a dark and grisly subject, “I’m not a depressed person,” Neuberg insists. “I’m a really happy guy.”
Indeed, Neuberg’s sense of humor is hard to miss.
Two years ago, for the second time, he threw his hat into the ring in the race for Republican candidate for president of the United States. His press information contained slogans such as, “He’s never served in Congress or committed a felony.”
In a platform that included advocating education for all Americans, reproductive choice for women and solar-powered mass transit projects, he declared that White House renovations should begin with a paint job. “Why should it be white?” he asked. “I’d like to see more color in the White House.”
For her part, Sussman has spent plenty of time in Washington.
As the social studies department chair at Bishop O’Dowd High School, she takes students to the capital every year and generally spends her free time there scouring the Holocaust Museum for materials to add to a semester course on the subject she has taught for the last several years.
It was there she met the director of the Mandel Fellowship program, who suggested she apply.
“I’m interested in seeing how I can be a resource for other teachers so it’s more widely taught,” says Sussman, who is not Jewish, but whose marriage to a Jewish man sparked her interest in the subject.
“I think it is still a footnote in a lot of history textbooks. `Six million Jews died in World War II’ is a statistic and kids can’t relate to statistics.”