Micah Ross has always been passionate about Holocaust education. For her project, Micah teamed up with Emory University Hillel where she created, wrote, and taught a brand new five-week Fellowship titled the Holocaust Learning Fellowship (HLF) for 10 students. Her goal was to provide students from all backgrounds with an emotionally and intellectually immersive opportunity to learn the history of the Holocaust. She recognized that many of her peers thought they had a strong understanding of the Holocaust, but most of their understanding came from Hollywood films, the Diary of Anne Frank, and short lessons they had in high school. She wanted to add nuance to the student’s understanding of the Holocaust by diving deep into the uncomfortable and upsetting narratives while also intertwining discussions of morality and psychology. Some of the topics covered included the Nuremberg Laws, the psychological obedience to authority by discussing the Milgram experiments, the Judenraete, bystanders, concentration camps, the roundup of French Jews, and the tokenization of the Holocaust through victims such as Anne Frank. Micah also partnered with the RememberUs project to assign each participant a name of a different child who died in the Holocaust. In their last session, they each received a certificate with the name of the child they will remember. Overall, Micah had 10 total student participants ranging from freshmen to juniors from different backgrounds and religions.
Micah also planned and hosted three other Holocaust remembrance events. The first was on International Holocaust Remembrance Day in January 2022, where she hosted a Zoom event with Holocaust survivor Anita Magnus Frank. Over 20 students were in attendance to hear Anita’s testimony. The second and third events occurred on Yom HaShoah in April 2022. In the morning, she invited all the campus Rabbis to speak at the University chapel, had students read Holocaust poetry, tell personal family histories, and partake in a candle lighting ceremony. That evening, she worked to create a rock garden at Hillel, and students came to paint rocks with the names of those who perished. These events allowed for the entire Jewish community on campus to come together in commemoration of Yom HaShoah.
