http://www.delawareonline.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20051029/NEWS/510290327/1006

By TERRI SANGINITI
The News Journal
10/29/2005

WASHINGTON -- Piles of dry-rotted shoes, twisted and sooty, that belonged to Jewish men, women and children exterminated by German Nazis, line both sides of a dimly lit corridor in the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Viewing the physical remnants of the genocide of millions of Jews 60 years ago was a sobering experience for law enforcement commanders from Delaware.

Twenty-five Delaware State Police commanders toured the museum Friday, participating in a 7-year-old instructional program, Law Enforcement and Society: Lessons from the Holocaust.

Vintage black-and-white home movies featured police officers rounding up men and women in trenches and shooting them in their backs.

They show police officers crowding people like cattle onto rail cars and sending them to their deaths in gas chambers.

"The Jewish people so willingly trusted that they were going to be taken care of, because law enforcement would not allow that to happen," state police Superintendent Col. Thomas F. MacLeish said afterward.

"And they belied that trust."

It seemed incomprehensible to the veteran troopers.

For the first two hours, the officers examined the atrocities inflicted during Hitler's rise to power in the early 1930s and the Third Reich's impact on society.

Absorbing that history, which occurred long before any of the 24 men and one woman were born, reinforced the core values that led them to service-oriented careers.

"This is about your responsibility to protect everyone, not just some people," said Ken Howard, a retired Alexandria, Va., police officer who volunteers at the museum.

In a classroom setting later, Anti-Defamation League regional director David Friedman probed the feelings of the commanders, who col- lectively share 531 years of police experience.

He challenged them to define the word "stereotype." What negative images do people have of police? How do you want kids to view you?

When asked how people in Delaware view the state police, the commanders responded with "caring, ethical, professional, fair, helpful, compassionate."

"Your values call you to a service-oriented profession to serve others," said Capt. Galen Purcell. "Some may lose sight of that, but initially, we all started out that way."

The veterans acknowledged they felt the public sometimes viewed them as having a "wall of silence," and being "above the law and abusive." They said they felt they were treated with a lack of respect.

Friedman reminded them that, unlike in Nazi Germany, the American public has the freedom to express disrespect.

"The fact that an average citizen can say these things to your face, and not get shot in the head, is amazing," he said.

Since the program's inception in 1999, 22,000 law enforcement officers have taken part.

MacLeish said he hopes to send the recruit class and police supervisors to the seminar.

"How are they going to apply what they learned today?" he said. "I think it's going to be a better day for the men and women who work under these commanders and for the people they serve."

Contact Terri Sanginiti at 324-2771 or tsanginiti@delawareonline.com