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In an effort to help her eighth grade ELA and Social Studies students greater understand World War II and the Holocaust, teacher Jenna Ginsburg invited her cousin, Jack Trompetter to Eastchester to describe his experiences during the 1940s.
Noting that the subject matter wasn’t fully resonating with some students, Ginsburg realized, “there must be something I can do to keep the topic from merely becoming just another account in a text book.”
When he was three months old in 1942, Trompetter was separated from his Jewish parents and sent to live on a farm in the Netherlands for his own safety. He was one of the “hidden children” who lived with a poor Protestant farming family. For years he thought that family was his own, before being reunited with his birth parents as a teenager.
After describing his experiences during World War II, Trompetter answered questions from the students, explaining that talking about the atrocities he and his family faced is “his way of keeping alive the stories and memories of those who suffered or perished during this dark period of history.”
“His history of being hidden was extraordinary,” Middle School teacher Andrew Weiss said. “This will undoubtedly resonate with each member of our student body who had the privilege to hear him speak.”
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