An article in the March 16, 1995, issue of Washington Jewish Week detailed the launch of Bearing Witness, a local initiative that sought to educate Catholic teachers about the Holocaust.
Created in 1995 by the Anti-Defamation League’s Washington, D.C., regional office, the Archdiocese of Washington and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, the goal was for Catholic school educators to help students understand the history of antisemitism, the Holocaust and modern-day prejudice.
The 1995 article followed 20 teachers from 10 area Catholic schools and parishes who attended a Holocaust training program that March, including a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum — the first all-Catholic group of educators at a USHMM teacher training seminar.
They described being emotionally moved by the Tower of Faces exhibit, a two-story display showing photos of Jews who had been killed in their Lithuanian village.
During the visit, the educators grappled with complex history, namely the fact that many Catholic churches did nothing as the Holocaust persisted. That awareness turned into a promise to bring Holocaust education into their schools.
Thirty years later, Bearing Witness has expanded to become a national program.
Bearing Witness has now trained more than 1,900 Catholic school educators, including
more than 400 who are local, which reached 300,000 students in the U.S. The program is covered financially through grants, and participants can choose to embark on a free trip to Israel to further their learning through Bearing Witness Advanced.
