KANSAS CITY, Mo. — Students in the Kansas City area are learning more about the Holocaust by visiting an exhibit at Union Station.
Thursday marked International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
In November, Southeast High School students went to the "Auschwitz: Not Long Ago. Not Far Away." exhibit. It was eye-opening for 15-year-old Caleb Spencer.
"A lot of horrific things were done during the Holocaust," Spencer said.
To prepare for the exhibit, Karyl Michel had her students read articles and watch video clips. Michel also taught her students how the Holocaust did not happen overnight.
"Little things took place in the government, step by step, until they reached this pinnacle of horror with the death counts," said Michel, Southeast High School reading interventionist.
Six million European Jews and many others were murdered during that time period.
The exhibit gives students and the community a better understanding of the Holocaust and allows them to connect what they learned in the classroom.
"To see these artifacts, to see pieces of the barrack, pieces of the perimeter fence, these are things that you would normally have to travel to the site to see," said Dr. Shelly Cline with the Midwest Center for Holocaust Education.
Cline said around 30,000 students have gone through the exhibit since it's been in Kansas City.
"The Holocaust is an event to many students today that might seem like it took place a long time ago and in a world that's very much removed from our own, but as we know antisemitism and indifference to the suffering of others is something that continues to our own time," Cline said.
For students like Caleb, one image still stays with him.
"The gas chambers mostly, how they tricked them into thinking they were going to take a shower, but instead of water coming out, it released poisonous gas," he said.
It's a horrifying sight none will ever forget.
"We need to pay attention to what's going on in our world and in our communities and in our nation so that it doesn't happen again," Michel said.
