- JFCS in the Media
- Education
- Holocaust Center
J Weekly
By Dan Pine
High school teacher Jessica Vaughn’s students have no trouble relating to Jewish refugees fleeing Hitler in the 1930s. Whether from Latin America, Southeast Asia or the Middle East, the teens know what it means to flee one’s homeland for safety. Most have refugees in their own families.
That explains why teaching the Holocaust through the book “The Children of Willesden Lane” resonated with her English Language Development class at San Lorenzo’s Arroyo High School.
Written by Mona Golabek and Lee Cohen, the book recounts the story of Golabek’s mother, Lisa Jura, a Jewish piano prodigy forced at age 14 to flee Nazi-occupied Austria in the 1938 Kindertransport to England. She eventually immigrated to California and raised two daughters, Mona and Renee, both of whom became classical pianists as well.