OttawaHerald.com -- Community News. Community Connections.

	Franklin County, Kansas, USA

Subscriber Services Home Delivery Gift Subscription Stop-Start Delivery Missing Paper Back Issues Newsstand Locations Shopper Locations

Advertising Services Manage Your Account Place a Classified Ad Place a Display Ad Advertise Online Business Finder Directory

Other Services Submit News Laminated Items Photos & Keepsakes Article Archives Contact Us History of the Herald Our Policies

Suggest a poll topic

2009-11-21

2009-11-18

2009-11-05

Agriculture

Lifestyles

Thursday, June 11, 2009 12:05 PM

Shooting hits home for recent museum visitors

Teacher, students recently returned from Holocaust Museum, site of deadly attack

By VICKIE MOSS, Herald Managing Editor

An Ottawa teacher who took a group of students to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., last week said he doesn’t understand how a man could have breached security and shot a museum guard Wednesday.

Joe Tokarz, who teaches eighth grade American History at Ottawa Middle School, took 17 students and a parent to tour sites in the nation’s capital last week.

The group toured the Holocaust Museum June 4, less than a week before a rifle attack by a gunman authorities identified as an 88-year-old white supremacist.

James von Brunn, a Holocaust denier who once tried to kidnap members of the Federal Reserve Board, is the suspect in Wednesday’s assault at the museum. Guard Stephen T. Johns, 39, who was black, was killed.

Security engaged the gunman as soon as he stepped inside the crowded museum and began shooting, authorities said. One guard shot and critically wounded the assailant, who was being treated at a Washington hospital.

Security at the museum — and throughout buildings in Washington — appeared very tight, Tokarz said.

“I personally can’t understand how anything could get in,” the teacher said. “You go through one door in a single file line. They search you and search your bag; I don’t allow the kids to take a bag. There are no cameras and cell phones are turned off.”

This was Tokarz’s fifth trip with Ottawa students, although he said the school has been going to Washington for about 25 years. He hasn’t talked to any of the students about the trip since the shooting and isn’t sure how they will react, or how Wednesday’s incident will affect future trips.

“Washington, to me, is the greatest city on this planet,” he said. “There’s so much stuff to see, to do, to try to understand about our country.

“I don’t want to see this curtail people from going by making it impossible to get into places. But I’m sure security is going to tighten up.”

Museum director Sara Bloomfield said the museum takes security very seriously and that training had prepared guards to respond to the attack.

‘‘So we feel that this actually worked extremely well in terms of how many people’s lives were saved in this incident,’’ she told NBC.

Investigators are trying to determine how von Brunn acquired the .22-caliber rifle used in the attack, said law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity.

The musuem is a popular tourist destination, especially for groups of young adults like the middle schoolers from Ottawa, Tokarz said.

The museum allows visitors to take a self-guided tour where they can privately view photographs and videos, as well as historic artifacts like a train car or oven used to kill Jewish people, Tokarz said. Some rooms include collections of items like watches, shoes or hair.

The museum affects every student differently, Tokarz said. Students who studied Anne Frank in eighth grade have a greater appreciation and understanding than seventh graders, he said, but the trip will better prepare the younger students for next year.

“It’s an incredibly solemn place,” he said.

“When you’re in there, it’s a very quiet atmosphere. Your emotions are kind of ragged anyway. I can’t even imagine a gun going off in there.”

The Associated Press contributed to this report.