By Jack Maher, Multimedia Journalist, and Devan Crean, Marketing & Communications Specialist, Jeffco Public Schools
Donated shoes start to fill a metal cage near the Deer Creek Middle School cafetorium as a stark reminder of lives lost during the Holocaust.
As another passing period began at Deer Creek Middle School, there was the usual rush and hustle of students making their way to class. But there was something different, and somber for the students to walk by while on their way to the cafetorium; a small metal cage that’s set aside to teach an unforgettable history lesson that is very personal for the man who created it.
“I started the Holocaust shoe project almost 16 years ago in order to honor my father who was a Holocaust survivor. But mainly, I wanted to teach students and people in my community about the Holocaust and the sheer numbers of people that were killed,” explained Deer Creek Technology Engineering/STEM teacher Alan “Wood” Morawiec.
Each May, during Holocaust Awareness Week, Morawiec sets up the cage and starts to fill it with shoes his students bring into his classroom throughout the school year. For anyone who asks, he tells the story about his dad, including the day his father was seized while living in a ghetto in Kobryn, Poland.
“He was then taken away from his family and he was sent to a labor camp in the Ukraine. He was doing backbreaking work building runways and roads for the Nazis with very little water and very little food to eat,” said Morawiec.
His father escaped, and spent part of the war in the Polish resistance, attacking Nazi trains and installations. It’s a hero’s story that makes a big impression on his students, as well as the growing display of shoes that represent the 11 million who perished in the Holocaust.
“It left a very serious impression, because you don’t really understand how big a number 11 million is until you see 700 pair of shoes and know it’s at least a thousand times greater than that,” said seventh-grader Noelle Smith.
Morawiec tries to teach his students to look at the shoes not as pairs of shoes but as people. It’s a visual aid to make the message hit home. Once Holocaust Awareness Week ends, the shoes will be donated to charity.
“It’s a good thing to do, because there [are] kids out there who need shoes and aren’t fortunate enough like us to get shoes and nice things like we do,” said seventh-grader Scott O’Hayre.
It’s a great lesson for students, but it’s also Morawiec’s way of dealing with being a child of a Holocaust survivor.
“There are other children of survivors that don’t have an outlet to work through the issues that they have growing up as a child with their parents as holocaust survivors so this is my outlet, and most importantly, this is my way to give back to the community, to give back to the needy,” said Morawiec. “It’s called Tikkun Olam that we are mandated in the Torah to help repair the world and this is my way of doing it.”
Watch the JPS-TV version of this story here.