This summer, I joined a passionate group of Palm Beach County educators on an unforgettable journey through Europe, guided by leading Holocaust scholars and supported by inSIGHT Through Education and the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous. Over 10 intense days, we traveled through the Netherlands, Germany, and Denmark, visiting places that brought history off the page and into our hearts.
Seven dedicated teachers from Spanish River High, Loggers Run Middle, Polo Park Middle, Boca Raton High, and Dr. Joaquin Garcia High schools took part, along with two district leaders in Holocaust studies and Jewish history. Our goal was clear: return with new knowledge, deeper understanding, and personal stories that will bring history to life for our students.
We began in Amsterdam, walking the streets of the Jewish Quarter and visiting the National Holocaust Museum, the Portuguese Synagogue, and the Resistance Museum. One of the most powerful moments came inside the Frank family apartment where Anne Frank lived before going into hiding. Visiting her home and then the Anne Frank House made her story feel immediate and deeply human. Behind every statistic is a child, a family, a future stolen.
In Germany, we stood on the haunting grounds of Bergen-Belsen, the concentration camp where Anne and her sister Margot died. The silence there is like nothing else. It is one thing to read about the Holocaust. It is another to walk where it happened. To stand where people suffered. To feel the weight of absence all around you. That silence speaks volumes.
But it was Denmark that moved me most. We visited small coastal towns where ordinary people did extraordinary things, helping more than 7,000 Danish Jews escape the Nazis in 1943 by ferrying them across the water to safety in Sweden. We walked through churches where Jews were hidden and stood on docks where boats set out under cover of night. We even crossed that same stretch of water, from Helsingør to Helsingborg, imagining what those nights must have felt like.
This experience directly connects to a program we already teach in Palm Beach County elementary schools about the Danish Rescue. Now, our teachers can say, “I stood there. I saw it.” And our students will see courage and moral clarity not just as distant ideals but as real choices made by real people.
We came back with more than photos and memories. We returned with urgency. With commitment. With a renewed sense of why this work matters. Holocaust education is not just about the past. It is about giving students the tools to recognize hatred, injustice, and indifference in their own lives and the courage to respond.
Thanks to the unwavering support of inSIGHT Through Education and the visionary leadership of the Jewish Foundation for the Righteous, our district continues to provide powerful, hands-on professional development for educators. When teachers are transformed by what they learn, their classrooms become places where history lives, empathy grows, and students rise to the challenge of being good human beings.
In Palm Beach County, we are committed to ensuring that every student learns the lessons of the Holocaust. This journey reminded us that history is not something preserved in a museum. It lives in the choices we make, the stories we tell, and the future we build together. That is why we went. That is why we teach. And that is why we will never stop.
Kimberly Coombs, M.Ed., is the School District of Palm Beach County’s program planner of Holocaust studies and Jewish history (K-12). Coombs is a Jewish Foundation for the Righteous Alfred Lerner fellow.
