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Is PA forgetting the Holocaust?

Pennsylvania students may have skipped over entire chunks of history—including slavery, genocide and the Holocaust.

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Pennsylvania students may have skipped over entire chunks of history—including slavery, genocide and the Holocaust, according to a video shared by Newsworks today.

Rhonda Fink-Whitman, a broadcast personality and author of 94 Maidens, along with State Representative Brendan Boyle (D-Montgomery) are fighting to pass House Bill 176 to require teaching the Holocaust, genocide and human rights violations in Pennsylvania's middle schools and high schools. Currently, districts throughout the state are not required to teach genocide, including slavery and the Holocaust.

The bill, sponsored and cosponsored by 26 democrats and four republicans, was shot down in the house with a tied vote of 99-99. Senate Bill 47, sponsored and cosponsored by 28 democrats and two republicans, was introduced to the Senate Education Committee and has not yet been voted on.

Find-Whitman, a Bensalem resident and child of a Holocaust survivor, is still fighting for the curriculum in her home state. She produced a viral video in which she posed Holocaust-related questions to students at college campuses like Temple University and University of Pennsylvania. The students' knowledge was riddled with gaps, meager when contrasted against the knowledge of students educated in New Jersey, which has instituted a mandatory curriculum on genocide and slavery. 

Eight countries and five states have enacted legislation requiring the teaching of the Holocaust and genocide. 

"It is of deep importance in our increasingly multicultural society and our interdependent world that our students recognize the sanctity of life and the dignity of the individual," the California Department of Education wrote in its curriculum for human rights and genocide. The law was introduced 26 years ago.

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