Bills would mandate Holocaust and Black history education in Maine
The legislation before the Education and Cultural Affairs Committee would require all Maine public schools to include curriculum on genocide and Black history in their courses of study.
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For Holocaust survivors like Charles Rotmil, the genocide committed against Jews by Nazi Germany in World War II should not be an optional subject in public education.
“We need to know what happened during this period so that it will never happen again,” Rotmil, 88, of Portland, told members of the Legislature’s Education and Cultural Affairs Committee Monday.
As a child, Rotmil was rescued and hidden by monks in Belgium at age 7. He and his brother survived the war, but his mother and sister died in a train crash and his father was arrested by the Nazis and executed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz. Rotmil has told his stories of survival to thousands of Maine students over the years. He said mandating education around genocide, which persists today in countries around the world, is key to preventing it.