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catholic school teacher visits holy land

Story by LIZ QUIRIN
Messenger editor

When an Our Lady of Mt. Carmel teacher became interested in the Holocaust, she never dreamed she would some day be visiting the Holy Land and hearing Scripture read and discussed with a rabbi and priest.

But that’s what happened to Deanna Smillie after she participated in a professional development program for educators sponsored by the Anti-defamation League and the Archdiocese of Chicago.

During the summer Smillie, along with Catholic school teachers from across the country, traveled to the Holy Land, visiting sites important to Jews and Christians alike.
“I want to get the word out and encourage other Catholic school teachers this is available,” Smillie said in a recent interview.

Smillie said she listened to the stories of so many survivors of the Holocaust, “chilling stories,” she said.
Her journey to the Holy Land began with “The Diary of Anne Frank,” which she was reading and discussing with an eighth-grade literature class. She became more interested in the Holocaust. Before Vatican Council II, “many Catholics thought the Jews deserved” punishment, and during WWII they turned their backs on their Jewish neighbors, but “there are just as many wonderful stories of Catholics standing up” to protect and rescue Jews from deportation to concentration camps during that time period.

“I don’t know what I would do (if faced with those life-threatening choices), but I hope I would stand up,” she said.
To qualify for the visit to the Holy Land, Smillie participated in a program at Mundelein, Ill., called “Bearing Witness” and then applied to a second, more advanced program that took her to Baltimore, Md., for discussions and lectures and finally to the Holy Land to visit sites important to the Jewish and Christian faiths.

Since her return to OLMC, Smillie has produced a slide program and wants to share it with other Catholic school teachers as well as ways to participate in this program.
For more information, please call OLMC at 942-4484.