GREENSBORO, N.C. (WGHP) -- The Holocaust is complex, heartbreaking and challenging to understand, but that doesn't mean its history shouldn't be taught. In Nov. 2021, North Carolina lawmakers passed the Gizella Abramson Holocaust Education Act. The law, signed by Governor Roy Cooper, mandates Holocaust education in public middle schools and high schools. With antisemitism on the rise and Holocaust deniers becoming increasingly vocal, and even mainstream, proponents of the legislation say this education is especially critical today. "Holocaust education is important to understand. Not only how this happened but also to understand something about the Jewish community prior to the Holocaust," Rabbi Guttman said. "What sort of country and society do we want to build here?" Guttman has taught the history of the Holocaust for 40 years. And with a bigger focus being placed on Holocaust education in schools, he had an idea. "I had taken Jewish groups to Poland to learn about the Holocaust on 20 different occasions, and I decided there could be a nice integration of my experience leading groups and guiding in Poland on this topic with the teachers here," Guttman said. "And if we could find the teachers, they could become teachers not only to kids but to other teachers." Think of it as a ripple effect. Guttman developed a plan to bring dozens of public school teachers from across the state to Poland each summer. For eight days they would undergo an intensive course on the Holocaust at no cost to them. So instead of just reading about the persecution and murders of six million Jews and millions of others by the Nazi regime and its allies during World War II, they would be immersed in it. The teachers, led by Guttman and Lee Holder with the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust, visited the concentration camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka and Majdanek. They also visited sites such as the town of Tykocin that are not prominently covered in American history books. "We take them to a place where there was a wonderful Jewish community, and the Jewish community was rounded up one day, taken out into the forest and shot," Guttman said. Two groups of North Carolina public school teachers have participated in the NC Educators Trip to Poland so far, representing 43 of the state's 100 counties. "Elie Wiesel the Nobel laureate said that when you hear a witness, you become a witness," Guttman said. "That was easy back in the days when we had a lot of Holocaust survivors that could speak to it ... On this trip, these 36 teachers become witnesses." Guttman described seeing the locations through the eyes of the teachers as "enormously powerful." "Until I took the teachers, I knew what Jewish adults and Jewish kids would see," Guttman said. "But the teachers were seeing other things that I hadn't seen before. And at some times, it was much harder for them." With a lifetime of service already under his belt as rabbi emeritus at Temple Emanuel in Greensboro, this project could just be his most impactful yet. "I feel a great sense of pride in this," Guttman said. "I think that what we're doing is important to our state, to the kinds of kids we're raising, to the education we're giving to them and possibly can serve as an example to other states." Three of the 36 teachers who went on the June 2024 NC Educators Trip to Poland are from Guilford County.