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In September, 20 middle and high school teachers from across the state will begin their second year of the two-year Rutgers Master Teacher Institute in Holocaust Studies program. The program is in its second cycle, the first having taken place between 2005 and 2007.

The program, which meets once every several weeks during the school year, educates teachers in the history of the Holocaust as well as trains them in the pedagogic methods involved in teaching the subject.

Each semester concentrates on a specific theme with each session featuring a different scholar. This upcoming fall semester will focus on the study of Holocaust survivors and memory.

"We will examine different approaches to the documentation of survivor testimony and the experience of memory," said Jeffrey Shandler, Professor of Jewish Studies at Rutgers University and academic advisor of the program.

According to Shandler, the scholars invited to speak this semester have each, in their respective research, contributed to our understanding of survivors and Holocaust memory. Jared Stark, author of "No Common Place" and the first lecturer this semester, has in his book traced the testimony of one survivor over the course of many years in order to demonstrate how an individual's memory shapes and is shaped by collective memory.

"It's not only interesting in what Holocaust survivors remember, but how they remember," Shandler said in regards to Stark's work. His scholarship, Shandler added, "is extremely useful in understanding an important part of Holocaust remembrance."

Other lecturers featured in the program this upcoming semester include Diane Wolf, a professor at the University of California, Davis who has written about child Holocaust survivors in post-war Holland and Douglas Greenberg, a historian and the executive dean of the School of Arts and Sciences at Rutgers who as the former executive director of the Shoah Foundation oversaw the recording of thousands of Holocaust survivors and other witnesses.

The program is funded largely through a grant by the Claims Conference and operates as a partnership between the Allen and Joan Bildner Center for the Study of Jewish Life at Rutgers University, the New Jersey Commission of Holocaust Education, and the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Of the 20 participants, 17 are public school teachers and two teach at Catholic schools. According to Karen Small, the associate director of the Bildner Center and the person who oversees the program, the teachers' prior backgrounds in Holocaust education range from those who have considerable experience in teaching the subject and want to develop their skills and knowledge to others who have taught related subjects and would like to learn more about teaching the Holocaust specifically.

The program grew out of the one-day teacher workshops offered through The Herbert and Leonard Littman Families Holocaust Resource Center at Rutgers. After receiving an initial grant from the Claims Conference in 2005, the program expanded into its current form. The fact that New Jersey law requires public schools to teach about the Holocaust also helps explain the motivation to establish the two-year teacher training program, according to Small.

"We thought it would be much more worthwhile to do it on a long-term basis," she said.

In addition to the lecture component, the program also offers training in how to teach the subject matter in a middle or high school.

"The program helps teachers decide what to teach," Small said, citing the breadth, complexity, and sensitive nature of the subject matter. "What do you bring back to teach to a 14-year-old?"

The program will also invite alumni of the previous program to attend the sessions, which according to Small, will provide continuity for past participants as well as allow current participants to meet other educators in the state who teach the Holocaust.

Small is enthusiastic about the upcoming semester and about the future of the program generally.

"It is great to meet teachers who are out in the field and who want to develop the skills and knowledge -- it's a truly gratifying experience," Small said.