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Trying to understand the sheer volume of five million items of any size, type or variety of anything is typically beyond our grasp. To stop and think about five million lives lost is something many of us will never understand.

Jason Bryant is trying to help his students at Chisago Lakes High School understand, though. He wants them to stop and think about the five million people who lost their lives during the Holocaust and think about them as individual lives, with hopes, dreams and talents that could have made a difference to the world.

Bryant teaches freshman English at CLHS, but his current curriculum reaches far beyond a literature assignment.

Bryant has spent the entire third quarter focusing on all aspects of the Holocaust, starting with an autobiography, Night, by Elie Wiesel, a survivor who made it out of the Auschwitz camp and went on to earn the Nobel Peace Prize.

Throughout the unit, the classes have learned about Jewish culture, Nazis and Hitler and World War II. They have read books, seen footage and watched movies like Life is Beautiful and even Chicken Run.

Bryant said the best way to help the students understand what was lost during the Holocaust is to bring it down to a personal level.

“They can’t grasp five million dead, but if they see a face and a name, then they can get attached,” he said.

It has been difficult for some students to learn about concentration camps and see the photos. Bryant said the emotions attached to it made him ask at one point if students would like to stop studying the Holocaust. “Very few raised their hands,” he said. “Those that did, said it was just too emotional.”

Bryant has a wall of faces – either survivors of the Holocaust or ones that didn’t make it out – along with their personal stories, in his classroom. Next to it is the centerpiece of a fund drive that will also help the students understand the enormity of the loss of five million lives.

A large glass water bottle stands on a table, ready to collect $50,000 to be donated to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. Each penny represents one life lost in the Holocaust.

Bryant said the students have pored themselves into this fundraiser, but he doesn’t expect the goal will be reached.

“If and when it isn’t met – when we don’t collect five million pennies, yet they see the jar fill up over and over, it will sink in. They’ll realize how many five million is.”

Talking with the students, however, you hear a different story.

“We’re going to raise all of it – if not more,” one fourth period freshman said.

To others, it didn’t matter how much was raised.

“We all want to reach the goal, but it’s a small thing to stand up and show that respect. It makes a big difference,” one student said.

“It helps prevent people from forgetting,” another said.

They said it makes them feel good to be able to raise money for the museum, so that future generations will always remember what happened.

“It’s cool that the survivors are telling their stories and their kids are telling their stories,” one student said.

Some students said they believed something like the Holocaust could happen again. “It could easily happen, but who would be targeted and why?” one student asked.

The students aren’t just learning about the Holocaust during this experience, Bryant said. He wants the students to take away some life lessons as well.

“My ultimate hope is that when the kids see bullying, injustice and indifference around them – whether in the hallways or in life – they notice it and do something to change it,” Bryant said.

“All of them can make a difference. This project teaches them not to just learn about it, but do something about it.”

Students agreed. “You learn you can’t be neutral, stand up and take a side,” one said. “You see a whole lot of hate everyday and you remember what you read and it makes you think,” another said. “Did those people bullying ever stop to think how that feels?”

Bryant is extremely proud of how dedicated the students are to the fundraising effort. Students have taken the initiative to collect money outside of school, setting up collection boxes at local businesses.

Next week, a group of students will be asking for $1 donations from students, who will then “adopt” a Holocaust victim or survivor for the day, in hopes that they will learn about that one person’s experience and share it with others.

Bryant plans on sending the money to the Holocaust Memorial Museum around May 1. He wants to ensure the students will still be in school when a response is sent back from the museum.

Bryant is in his first year teaching in the Chisago Lakes schools. Previously, he taught in Virginia where he organized similar Holocaust fundraisers in the classroom. He said the one at CLHS has been by far the most successful fundraiser he has led.

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