[Congressional Record Volume 169, Number 65 (Wednesday, April 19, 2023)]
[Extensions of Remarks]
[Page E334]
From the Congressional Record Online through the Government Publishing Office [www.gpo.gov]




                     REMEMBERING MARGOT STERN STROM

                                 ______
                                 

                            HON. STEVE COHEN

                              of tennessee

                    in the house of representatives

                       Wednesday, April 19, 2023

  Mr. COHEN. Mr. Speaker, I rise today to recall Margot Stern Strom, a 
pioneer in Holocaust history teaching and a powerful advocate of anti-
bigotry education. Ms. Strom passed on March 27 at her home in 
Brookline, Massachusetts. In 1975, as a seventh- and eighth-grade 
language arts teacher in Brookline, she and a colleague, Bill Parsons, 
attended a lecture on the Holocaust and realized how little they knew 
about it, and how little was being taught to adolescents. They founded 
Facing History and Ourselves which has developed curriculum on the Nazi 
atrocities before and during World War II. It has also taught about Jim 
Crow racial discrimination and Ku Klux Klan violence in the United 
States, the Armenian Genocide, apartheid, and other forms of bigotry 
and antisemitism, including more recent tutorials on the Tree of Life 
Synagogue massacre in Pittsburgh and the George Floyd murder in 
Minnesota. Facing History has reached tens of thousands of students and 
teachers over the years. The daughter of parents who operated a 
furniture store in my hometown of Memphis, Ms. Strom graduated from the 
University of Illinois--Champaign-Urbana in 1964 and eventually moved 
to Massachusetts to teach. She retired as executive director of Facing 
History in 2014. I extend my condolences to her daughter, Rachel, her 
son, Adam, her extended family, and her many inspired colleagues, 
supporters and friends.

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