Lessons of the Shoah is an event that JC has hosted for the last 10 years that aims to educate students with genocide experiences and lessons. This event told stories of genocide survivors from the Holocaust and the Rwandan genocide.

Speakers included Dr. Charles Heller, Eugenie Mukeshimana, Dr. Paul Lazor, Father Francis Ouma, and Nathalie Mukashaza Piraino.

LOTS is an event that students in the Human Rights and US History classes were invited to attend, along with students from 11 other schools.

After the event, the JC students who attended participated in class discussions and written reflections.

LOTS Co-Coordinator Louise Géczy said that the purpose of LOTS is to “share the life lessons found in the Holocaust and provide information about genocide and its immediate and long-term effects.”

Mrs. Géczy has been directing Holocaust events at JC for many years. She said, “One of JC’s mission goals is to graduate students who possess a global perspective and a sense of commitment to human rights and the pursuit of justice for all humans.”

Mrs. Géczy hope that by attending LOTS students “participants left with a greater level of the aftermath of genocide and its long-term effects on people who experience it, the knowledge that genocide is not just facts and statistics but people who suffered and often died, and a desire to be upstanders throughout their lifetimes.”

Junior Randi Sumler attended the event for her AP US History class. She learned about the “psychology of hate and three genocides that have occurred in recent history. Two of these I had no prior knowledge about, which was surprising to me, considering the horrendous acts that occurred.”

She plans to spread the information she learned from LOTS by “correcting people when I see them spreading false information and educating people on how discrimination can escalate when they’re making jokes or comments they deem as harmless.”

Mrs. Géczy hopes that students would take away that “human rights are a focus that all of us should have; all of us should be upstanders whenever we encounter opportunities to do this in our daily lives.”

From LOTS, Randi learned the lesson of having to “be an upstander rather than a bystander and to speak up when I see people spreading hate.”