Pictured in the classroom are four of the Nazi leaders tried decades ago for World War Two atrocities, recreated for the mock trial at Fox Creek
BULLHEAD CITY – For the 15th year, history students at Fox Creek Junior High School have hands-on experience learning about one of western civilization’s more pivotal moments: World War Two’s Holocaust. At least six million mostly European Jews died at the hands of Adolph Hitler and the Nazi party.
The students’ Holocaust studies include an abbreviated recreation of the Nuremberg Trials, conducted by the war’s Allied prosecutors against Nazi leaders and collaborators. A fictionized version was made famous by 1961’s Judgment at Nuremberg, consistently ranked as one of the finest films ever made in the U.S.
Fox Creek social studies teacher Dr. Noelle Blevins assigned students the roles of victims and witnesses, prosecution and defense attorneys, jury and jurists. Some followed curriculum scripts, while others conducted research and delved into their characters.
“The Holocaust has always been fascinating to me – for what it says about humanity, both the depths people can fall to, as well as the heights they rise to,” said Dr. Blevins. “I enjoy bringing my passion for this particular area of history to the classroom. This trial is one of the events students look forward to in our school year, and I was really pleased this year with how well the students got into their parts playing lawyers, witnesses, and judges, and bringing out the facts and emotions of what they had been studying. It is the sort of activity students remember long after being in eighth grade.”
Among those on trial at Fox Creek were Nazi military, extermination and propaganda leaders Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Albert Speer and Jules Streicher. All were found guilty by the student jury, with punishment ranging from the death penalty for Goering to 15 years for Speer. According to historians, non-Jewish victims of Nazis who died in concentration/death camps and by various means or were used as slave labor included Roman Catholics, Slavs, Jehovah’s Witnesses, Freemasons, people of color, gays, lesbians, Soviet prisoners of war, political dissidents and others viewed as “non-Aryan.”
Dr. Blevins’ month-long curriculum often overlaps with the annual International Holocaust Remembrance Day. Her program at Fox Creek began long before Arizona statutorily required Holocaust education in public schools. Fox Creek assistant principal Kory Burgess is also considered an expert in Holocaust education and awareness, having developed programs during his teaching career.
As aged Holocaust survivors and World War Two camp liberators die daily, there are fewer eyewitnesses to that chapter in history – and an increasing number of Holocaust deniers and conspiracy theorists, including in the United States. As Holocaust survivor, author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel said, “To forget would not only be dangerous but offensive; to forget the dead would be akin to killing them a second time.”
