Another player has entered the field of Holocaust education in Nebraska. Like the Anti-Defamation League/Community Relations Committee’s Institute for Holocaust Education, the goal is enlightening more people about this horrific period of history.
 Sam Fried, a Holocaust survivor who has long been involved in speaking about his wartime experiences as a prisoner in Auschwitz, helped form the National Holocaust Education Fund (NHEF) along with his wife, Frances. Their objective is to raise funds to provide college-level  programs at five Nebraska institutions of higher learning.
 “If Auschwitz-Birkenau and the Holocaust teach us anything,” he noted, “they teach us that people of goodwill must face unpleasant truths and stand up against all forms of virulent racism and bigotry.”
 Fried was a teenager in Auschwitz, arriving with the Hungarians, the last group of Jews to be captured. Interviewed by his granddaughter, Maggie Fried, when she was a staffer for her high school newspaper, he told her, “I remember listening to the BBC radio about Hitler. A kid hearing adults talk about it was like it was another planet.”
   Hearing rumors about the impending invasion, Fried added that a friend helped him devise an escape plan. But he returned home at the last minute and watched in horror as his parents were led away by the Nazis and neighbors who had been family friends began ransacking his home. 

Frances and Sam Fried stand before the Wall of Remembrance they donated at the Holocaust Memorial in Wyuka Cemetery in Lincoln. Fried was awarded an honorary doctorate last month by the University of Nebraska-Omaha for his role in Holocaust education.

  Throwing out his false papers, the teenaged Fried turned himself in and was deported to Auschwitz. He became prisoner #A5053, and though he eventually escaped, he weighed barely 80 pounds.
 With this new fund, however, Fried has vowed to educate young people about the torture and slaughter of six million Jews and five million people whose political persuasion, disabilities, and faith sent them to the gas chambers as well. Fried said the courses that will be taught at the University of Nebraska campuses in Omaha, Lincoln and Kearney as well as Creighton University and Wayne State College also will emphasize genocide occurring in parts of the world today.
 Chairman of the NHEF’s fundraising campaign is Alan Simon; other members include Fried, Mort Glass, Bill Ramsey, and Dr. Ron Roskens. Simon said the goal of the education fund is to finance two semester courses on the Holocaust for all colleges in Nebraska. The fund is a non-profit entity in partnership with the Omaha Community Foundation.
 While Fried’s new fund will concentrate on the college level, the Institute for Holocaust Education (IHE), a division of the Plains States office of the Anti-Defamation League, has been instrumental in training high school and middle school teachers for nearly a decade. Using Echoes and Reflections (an award winning curriculum developed by Yad Vashem, the ADL and the Shoah Foundation Institute and tested in four sites, including Omaha’s IHE), more than than 400 teachers across Nebraska have attended workshops facilitated by IHE director Beth Seldin Dotan.
 The IHE also has partnered with the Archdiocese in offering “Bearing Witness,” a program developed for Catholic educators to understand the history of anti-Semitism and the Holocaust; the IHE also co-sponsors the annual essay contest, “Tribute to the Rescuers,” with Dana College.
 In addition, the IHE has hosted numerous exhibits and lectures about the Holocaust, ranging from a tribute to Japan’s Sugihara, the diplomat who saved the Mir Yeshiva in Lithuania to the recent Jewish Book Month exhibit, The Journey That Saved Curious George: The Wartime Escape of H.A. and Margret Rey, with author Louise Borden and illustrator Allen Drummond.
 Later this month “The Jews of Sosua,” an exhibit about European Jews who escaped to the Dominican Republic, opens in the Pennie Z. Davis Gallery for Holocaust Education on the JCC campus. The IHE also will commemorate the 70th anniversary of Kristallnacht in November and will recognize survivors in Omaha, including Fried.
 According to Alan Potash, regional director of the Plains States ADL/CRC of the Federation, “Holocaust and genocide education is important for all ages as we work to prevent these atrocities from happening again. IHE has been successful at meeting this need in middle schools and high schools in Nebraska and Iowa. In addition to being an educational resource for schools, IHE’s speakers, exhibits and special programs have been valuable community experiences.” Potash added, “The addition of NHEF as a funding source for university professors will broaden the scope of Holocaust education in Nebraska. I look forward to being a resource to NHEF.”
 For more information about the IHE, contact Dotan at 402.334.6575 or bdotan@adl.org. For information about the NHEF, call the OCF at 342.3582 or visit the website at www.holocausteducationfund.org.