by Abigail Klein Leichman
Why would a gentile public school teacher lecture Israeli high school students about the Holocaust?
New Milford High School history and special education teacher Colleen Tambuscio's goal was to widen the Israeli students' appreciation of the Holocaust as a genocide. "I knew the universal lessons would be new to them," she said.
The Holocaust studies curriculum Tambuscio initiated at Midland Park High School 15 years ago, and at New Milford nine years ago, came to the attention of the director of the UJA Federation of Northern New Jersey’s Partnership 2000 (P2K) program with Nahariya. Over the past decade, 13 Nahariya schools have been "twinned" with 22 North Jersey congregational and day schools for a variety of collaborative programming. But never before had a public school joined the project.