Lessons to Remember

Jack Trombetta dissected details of murder for a quarter-century as a detective. In that time, he helped unravel more than 30 homicides, guided by an instinct to piece together the minutiae of forced death. In 1997, Jack retired from the force, trading his police cruiser for a classroom. While he studied to become a teacher, one subject in particular sparked again what he says is his "innate compulsion" to solve crimes: the Holocaust. "It was the ultimate crimes." "It is the study of mass murder. I still have the police instinct. I want to know as much as I can....so I can teach my students that hating a people can lead to extermination of a people."

His interest led him to become one of 40 people to enroll in the inaugural class of a graduate degree program in Holocaust and genocide studies at Richard Stockton College in Pomona. It is the first master's program of its kind in the nation. Jack was also chosen to participate in their unique fellowship program for teachers to study " The Holocaust and Jewish Resistance" in Israel, with a stop in Poland. Trombetta takes the lessons from Stockton and boils them down so his students can draw a link between the Holocaust and current events. In one of his classes at Cape May County Schools for Special Services, he delivered a lesson on Adolf Hilter's youth in almost breathless sentences. Every once in awhile, he got consumed in a story, relating his experiences as an officer with that day's lesson on the Holocaust, and stop talking. "I'm sorry," he said.

"I get excited about this stuff. Where was I?" Before his students could pipe in, he started up again, asking whether they have blamed someone for their problems, used others as a scapegoats the way Hilter did with the Jews. Or whether they ever felt discriminated against because of their looks, pointing the question toward one girl with dreadlocks and a boy wearing a cowboy hat. "You have to make it relevant for them." "I feel like a crusader trying to impact the next generation."