The bottom line of District 113 Genocide Commemoration Day: Never Again

Dr. Bruce Law made an astute observation after the Holocaust survivor onstage finished his riveting presentation in the Deerfield High School auditorium.

"Students are usually on their phones nonstop. I saw not one student on a phone the entire time," said Law, Township High School District 113 superintendent.

As it should be, the district's Genocide Commemoration Day on April 25 was serious business.

Along with the presentation by 92-year-old retired Skokie dentist Dr. George Brent, who at 14 was rousted by Nazi "gendarmes" from a Jewish community in a small Czechoslovakia town and sent to camps in Auschwitz, Mauthausen and Ebensee, the district's eighth annual event honored victims and survivors of various genocides with displays, addresses and opportunities for students to take action and, importantly, never forget these atrocities.

"I do have quite a few family members who were involved in and fled the Holocaust," said Deerfield sophomore Naomi Lakier, in the second row for Brent's speech, which grew more faint with each horrific memory he related.

Lakier's grandfather, Anthony, left Lithuania "as things started to get bad," she said. Naomi's unsure what became of those left behind.

"I'm very happy that I'm able to learn more about the experiences of other people because I wasn't really able to learn through my family, because I lost touch with them. I really appreciate being given the opportunity to hopefully learn about what's currently going on, and help prevent further genocides from happening," she said.

Law noted the ongoing war in Ukraine, where mass graves have been found, courtesy of Russian forces. It brought home one of Brent's final remarks in a question-and-answer session with students following his presentation.

"People just never learn," Brent said.

But these students, and the faculty advisers helping them execute their months-long vision for Genocide Commemoration Day, are trying.

The event originated in 2015 when Deerfield student Andrew Devedjian was spurred by the silence around his people's history, which the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum describes as the first genocide of the 20th century - an estimated 664,000 to 1.2 million dead.

"Andrew Devedjian, who was a sophomore at the time, realized that no one was teaching about his family's heritage, which was the Armenian genocide, and this was all started by him," said District 113 board President Jodi Shapira.

She was standing near a photo exhibit of prominent Native Americans that, in part, might combat the "'invisibility' of Native people," explained faculty adviser Niki Antonakos.

"That was the very first time we had a genocide awareness day," Shapira said, "and I still love the fact that all of this is student-generated, student-organized with our faculty overseeing it all. But it all started with one student saying, you need to learn about my family's heritage as well."

Starting at 9:15 a.m., University of Minnesota professor Brenda J. Child delivered a remote speech to Deerfield and Highland Park high school students on "Indian" boarding schools, a damaging practice just now entering public awareness.

Brent's presentation was followed by another from fellow Holocaust survivor and former Deerfield resident Steen Metz, who was taken by boxcar from Denmark to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in occupied Czechoslovakia when he was 8 years old.

"I don't know what people understand about high school students these days, but when you see events like this and the things students really care about, I think that should tell us a lot about what kind of kids we have in our schools," Law said.

Among other exhibits, learning opportunities and activism challenges, a classroom offered the USC Shoah Foundation's video presentation, "Dimensions in Testimony," presented by the Illinois Holocaust Museum & Education Center in Skokie.

That included a 2015 interview with Aaron Elster of Chicago, who outlasted the Holocaust first in a Polish ghetto then for two years hiding in family friend's attic. Elster became vice president of the Illinois Holocaust Museum before he passed in 2018, the Shoah Foundation stated.

In its original format the "Dimensions" interviews with Elster and other Holocaust survivors are delivered as holograms in which people can ask questions and get responses from the subject.

These people, however, are not just ephemeral beings to those who put Genocide Commemoration Day together.

"My great-grandmother was a Holocaust survivor, so it's important to me, and I volunteer with both museums, Illinois' and the United States'. It's something I get interested in," said Deerfield senior Samantha Feinberg, one of the 12 student leaders on the event committee.

As Deerfield junior and student leader Katie Denison said from the auditorium podium, hers is probably the last generation to hear these tales first-hand.

"It's a passion, for sure," said Deerfield senior Jared Klinghoffer, also a Genocide Commemoration Day Committee student leader.

"It's something very special to me, because my great-grandmother was a Holocaust survivor. So from a young age my parents instilled in me the importance of teaching others to never forget, and telling the stories of the Holocaust to my kids, and my grandkids - and making sure my kids tell their grandkids," Klinghoffer said.

"Yes - out of love, out of passion, and out of remembrance."