Holocaust Survivor Speaks to PA Distance Students

Today, PA Distance students had the opportunity to hear from a Magda Brown, a Holocaust Survivor.

Education is about bettering the future: from a 6th-grader whose learning transforms how she sees herself to a graduate who starts as a first-generation college student. Improving individual futures, however, is only one part of education’s power.

We cannot forget another part of education’s power, especially as we are faced with the mass shooting at one of Pittsburgh’s synagogues this weekend.

It is hard to make any sense of it, yet we can recall that education has the power to help us understand history, and educators have the responsibility to share. As Winston Churchill is famously quoted for saying, “Those who fail to learn from history are condemned to repeat it.”

In light of this weekend's atrocious events, we can’t help but wonder if the great privilege of hearing from Magda Brown is one the most significant responses we could give to our students. Education enables empathy, and empathy is a powerful channel for change.

Magda Brown & History of the Holocaust Class

PA Distance Learning offers the class “History of the Holocaust” to its students each semester, and the students have the privilege to hear from a Holocaust survivor.

Magda Brown is a brave survivor who now tells her story to as many people as possible. She was a teenager in Hungary before the Holocaust, living a simple life. She soon ended up at the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp, where over one million people died during the Holocaust. Magda risked everything to escape. You can see her story here.

On her website, she shares the following: “My hope is that through sharing my story, I can personally talk about the horrors of the Holocaust to remind this generation of the dangers of hatred, prejudice and discrimination.”

PA Distance Learning proudly supports Magda in her goal to eliminate hatred, prejudice, and discrimination, and believes it is important now more than ever in a globalized world to stand against injustice together and to love each other no matter our backgrounds or religions.  

We are grateful to The Holocaust Center of Pittsburgh for setting up this opportunity for our students. We also thank the Holocaust Center for their tireless work in educating those in all generations, supporting and commemorating survivors, and documenting these stories so we may never forget this history.