NCCAT ANNOUNCES FIVE PRESTIGIOUS TEACHER SCHOLARSHIP AWARDS FOR HOLOCAUST SEMINAR IN POLAND
NCCAT is proud to announce scholarship awards for five outstanding teachers to attend a Holocaust Educator Seminar in Poland this summer. The five scholarship recipients were selected from among over 350 teachers who applied. They will be awarded these scholarships from the NCCAT Development Foundation’s Holocaust Endowment Fund.
The winners of the scholarships are:
Nicole Ellison (Cherokee County)
Josie Guin (Lee County)
Kim Jones (Orange County)
*Selena Nederhoff (Tyrrell County)*
Spencer Swindler (Cabarrus County)
The Development Foundation of NCCAT, Inc. maintains a Holocaust Endowment Fund as part of NCCAT’s ongoing support of Holocaust education in North Carolina. The Foundation’s endowment scholarships, for $3500.00 each, will cover the majority of expenses for an intensive one-week seminar in Poland in July 2026.
The teacher participants together with two NCCAT Teacher-educators (also funded by the endowment) will visit the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek and learn about the Holocaust and pre-war Jewish life in the cities of Warsaw, Krakow and Lublin. There will be a special ½ day teacher’s educational seminar at the Museum of the History of Polish Jews in Warsaw and a dialogue with Polish high school history teachers.
The trip will be led by Rabbi Fred Guttman and veteran Holocaust educator Lee Holder. Rabbi Guttman has been a Holocaust educator for more than 40 years and has led over 20 educational seminars in Poland. Lee Holder is a longtime North Carolina teacher and member of the NC Council on the Holocaust. He is the director of the Gizella Gross Abramson Resource Center for Holocaust and Civil Rights Education in Kinston, North Carolina. In 2011 he was named the Irena Sendler Award winner, recognizing one outstanding Holocaust educator annually, worldwide, and one in Poland.
Some forty teachers representing more than 20 North Carolina school systems will participate in this program.
NCCAT is pleased to be able to support the “Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act,” which became law in November 2021 and requires the development of Holocaust education curriculum for North Carolina schools.
Information about NCCAT’s Holocaust endowment and how to support it can be found at this link:
https://www.nccat.org/make-gift/give-online/holocaust-education-endowment-fund