Darius Jonathan, former advisor to the vice-president of Sudan [Photo by Sue Bush]
Clarksburg - The exhibits were in place and each station illustrated another facet of the Nazi occupation of Europe and the horrors of the Holocaust. The students who created the displays, all taught by elementary school teacher Michael Little, milled about the school gym.
And at 6 p.m., the school doors opened and visitors of "The Ruined and The Righteous: The Nazi Occupation of Europe 1933-1945" began to swarm each display.
This marked the second year that Little and his students tackled the challenging, emotionally-charged subject, and the second year that Erica Viens traveled to the school to see the exhibit. The Holocaust is responsible for the deaths of over six million European Jews, according to numerous historians. Jewish people were gassed, cremated, starved, beaten and killed by other torturous methods during the reign of German leader Adolf Hitler.
"I think it's good to teach about the Holocaust," Viens said. "When I was a freshmen in high school, a [Holocaust] survivor came and spoke and it had a very strong effect on me."
When asked if he was proud of the work his students had accomplished, Little said "Of course I am, look around."
Sarah Simonetti and Kristin Euchler are high school freshmen who participated during the 2006 Holocaust presentation. Simonetti and Euchler came to last night's presentation as volunteer assistants.
"This was the most interesting thing I've ever learned," said Simonetti. "And Mr. Little is the best teacher I ever had."
"This was so interesting and important to learn about,"said Euchler. "I wanted to be part of it again."
Exhibits included many World War II and Nazi artifacts from the collection of local historian Darrell K. English. Students researched numerous topics and produced displays on people including Sophie Scholl, who was a member of the White Rose Nazi resistance organization and was executed before the war ended.
A gymnasium-based exhibit about Anne Frank, whose family spent time in hiding in a small attic with several additional Jewish individuals,and whose diary was discovered and published after her death in a concentration camp, was expanded to a classroom. Seventh-grade students erected tributes to Frank inside of suitcases to illustrate the hardships of life in hiding. The exhibit was titled "A Life Story Told in Suitcases."
The Rabbi Robert Sternberg, director of the Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center in Springfield, spoke to numerous individuals about the Holocaust from a classroom and war veterans from the Northern Berkshire region hosted groups who passed through another classroom.
Among the displays stood an exhibit titled "Darfur." The booth sold bags of soup mix based on a favorite recipe of Mother Raile Daffala, with proceeds destined for the Sudan Relief Task Force. The task force is comprised of numerous Berkshire region churches that raise revenues specifically for persons who've been displaced by the violence and are living in the Khartoum region.
Also at the booth were members of the Mount Greylock Regional High School affiliate of the national "Help Darfur Now" organization.
Darius Jonathan, a former advisor to the vice-president of Sudan, was among the featured speakers at the event. During a brief interview, Jonathan said the current situation is "unacceptable."
"People are dying; 200,000, 300,000 people dead in three years," Jonathan said. "This is not acceptable in any civilized government. [Government officials] try to blame it all on the militias but it is the government that is depopulating the area to get to the resources, oil and uranium. The government has used money to buy people's silence."
"What I would like to see is pressure on the Sudan government and the people responsible for this brought to a court, a world court."
Susan Bush may be reached via e-mail at suebush@iberkshires.com or at 413-663-3384 ext. 29.
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State Fire Marshal: New Tracking Tool Identifies 50 Lithium-Ion Battery Fires
STOW, Mass. — The Massachusetts Department of Fire Services' new tool for tracking lithium-ion battery fires has helped to identify 50 such incidents in the past six months, more than double the annual average detected by a national fire data reporting system, said State Fire Marshal Jon M. Davine.
The Department of Fire Services launched its Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Investigative Checklist on Oct. 13, 2023. It immediately went into use by the State Police Fire & Explosion Investigation Unit assigned to the State Fire Marshal's office, and local fire departments were urged to adopt it as well.
Developed by the DFS Fire Safety Division, the checklist can be used by fire investigators to gather basic information about fires in which lithium-ion batteries played a part. That information is then entered into a database to identify patterns and trends.
"We knew anecdotally that lithium-ion batteries were involved in more fires than the existing data suggested," said State Fire Marshal Davine. "In just the past six months, investigators using this simple checklist have revealed many more incidents than we've seen in prior years."
Prior to the checklist, the state's fire service relied on battery fire data reported to the Massachusetts Fire Incident Reporting System (MFIRS), a state-level tool that mirrors and feeds into the National Fire Incident Reporting System (NFIRS). NFIRS tracks battery fires but does not specifically gather data on the types of batteries involved. Some fields do not require the detailed information that Massachusetts officials were seeking, and some fires may be coded according to the type of device involved rather than the type of battery. Moreover, MFIRS reports sometimes take weeks or months to be completed and uploaded.
"Investigators using the Lithium-Ion Battery Fire Checklist are getting us better data faster," said State Fire Marshal Davine. "The tool is helpful, but the people using it are the key to its success."
From 2019 to 2023, an average of 19.4 lithium-ion battery fires per year were reported to MFIRS – less than half the number identified by investigators using the checklist over the past six months. The increase since last fall could be due to the growing number of consumer devices powered by these batteries, increased attention by local fire investigators, or other factors, State Fire Marshal Davine said. For example, fires that started with another item but impinged upon a battery-powered device, causing it to go into thermal runaway, might not be categorized as a battery fire in MFIRS or NFIRS.
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