c. 1997 Religion News Service

WASHINGTON _ James Fleming Jr. is an atypical tour guide at an atypical museum who teaches students complex answers to complex questions about a difficult history.

Fleming, a 20-year-old African-American, regularly travels from his home in northeast Washington, passing the monuments and the Smithsonian, to arrive at the hulking gray building that houses the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

Once there, Fleming plays a key role not only in leading groups of young people through the Museum but also _ more indirectly _ in easing black-Jewish tensions.

Meeting his charges of the day _ six African-American 10th graders from Bowie High School in suburban Maryland _ Fleming points out that a visit to this museum is not an average field trip.”How is this museum different from other museums you’ve been to?”he begins the tour by asking. The question elicits a few mumbled responses such as,”It looks like we’re outside.” At the beginning, the students are not particularly eager to participate in a discussion of the Holocaust. Fleming says this is because all they know about the event comes from a few paragraphs in their history textbooks.

But Fleming, who looks imposing enough at almost 6 feet to be authoritative, soon captivates the students with his relaxed smile and direct speaking style. By the end of the tour, the students realize they are now witnesses to one of the most devastating events of the century.

Fleming believes the tour will affect their awareness and attitude toward citizenship for the rest of their lives.

Fleming attributes much of his success as a tour guide to the fact that he is a young African-American male.”I look, talk and dress just like them,”Fleming says just days before the Jewish holiday of Yom Ha’Shoa _ Holocaust Memorial Day, which this year falls on Sunday (May 4).

This surprises minority students who may otherwise feel personally unconnected with the Holocaust, he says.

The class from Bowie High School is one of hundreds of school groups who participate in”Bringing the Lessons Home: Holocaust Education for the Community,”a new education program for the museum. The museum estimates that as many as 500 school groups from Maryland alone visited the museum during fiscal year 1996. Others have come from as far away as California.

Divided into five groups of five-to-seven students, each group of Bowie High School juniors was led through the museum an hour before it opened to the public by one of five guides, who ranged from the unassuming but knowledgeable Fleming to a professional educator and a senior citizen.

Often during the course of the two-hour tour, the other guides directed their students to listen to Fleming’s explanation of a particular photograph or artifact.

Fleming, a student at the University of the District of Columbia, studies engineering and hopes to become an architect. As a high school student, he was recruited from an academic club by Lynn Williams, who was in charge of developing”Bringing the Lessons Home.” Fleming recalls being attracted first to the architecture of the museum, which is replete with symbolic uses of light and darkness, stone and open space. Then, as he began to understand the complexity of the history on display, he began to feel moved to teach others about it.

A $1 million grant from the Fannie Mae Foundation allowed Fleming and 10 other students to participate in an 11-week Holocaust course during the summer of 1994. At the end of the program, the students gave tours to their parents.

Williams, who is now coordinator of Washington-area school projects for the museum, says parents’ day was eye-opening for many students and educators. Williams recalls that a grandmother in her late 70s and the caregiver of one 16-year-old tour guide, remained silent throughout the tour.

Afterwards, she finally spoke up, asking Williams,”Has anything ever been written about this (the Holocaust)? Because I’ve never heard of any of this.” Since that first summer, over 150 guides have been trained. Some, like Fleming are paid interns. Others work as volunteers. Fleming’s tasks have included speaking at volunteer meetings, leading countless tours and participating in museum programs.

After learning for three years, he says,”I have another goal _ it’s to give back”by teaching students how to extract lessons from the dark legacy of the Holocaust.

The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, which opened in 1993, is a publicly funded”living memorial to the 6 million Jews and millions of other victims of Nazi fanaticism killed in the Holocaust,”according to museum literature.

The museum is designed as a self-guided tour _ there are no regularly scheduled guided tours for the public. But the Fannie Mae program provides structure for students who, Williams says, might otherwise breeze through the 36,000-square-foot Permanent Exhibition if left unguided.

Fleming says he regularly encounters attitudes that reflect the troubled state of black-Jewish relations.

When he asked the Bowie High School group why they thought Hitler targeted Jews, one African-American student volunteered,”because they had all the money.” And when explaining the Nuremberg Laws of 1935, by which Hitler set standards for German citizenship based on racial”purity,”Fleming asked the group whether Judaism is a race or a religion.”It’s more of a race than a religion,”said another black student.

Fleming challenges such attitudes without fanfare or frustration. He simply explained the concept of”scapegoat”to the first student, and said to the second student,”He (Hitler) tried to turn it (Judaism) into a race, but it’s a religion. You don’t have to wear this uniform right here to be a Nazi.”Raya Kalisman spent a year at the museum as a volunteer in the education department while on sabbatical from her job as a history teacher in Israel. Fleming calls Kalisman a valuable mentor, and Kalisman calls the museum’s program a”breakthrough”in Holocaust education.

Kalisman is now coordinator of the Center for Humanistic Education at the Ghetto Fighters’ House, the second largest Holocaust museum in Israel. Adopting a similar program of training tour guides and reaching out to local schools, Kalisman has begun a dialogue that brings together members of Israel’s Jewish, Arab Muslim and Druze communities.

The Holocaust is a touchy subject for the Muslim and Druze participants.”In Israel, the Holocaust isn’t a finished story,”says Kalisman. Because the state of Israel was established largely for Jews fleeing the Holocaust, she says, some Arabs consider themselves”victims of the victims.” But education and communication among the groups helps ease some of the resentment, she says.

Fleming agrees that education helps to bridge gaps between communities. He also says that learning about the Holocaust has given him new perspective on his own heritage as an African-American.”I saw parallels with this history and my own history,”he said.”Other people have been slaves, too, have been victimized, too.” DEA END LEBOWITZ