Kaitlyn Arms (Courtesy of Kaitlyn Arms)
For Kaitlyn Arms, education initiatives manager at Gratz College, working in Jewish professional life was a calling of sorts. Her grandfather was the late Charles Davidson, a legendary cantor and composer. Arms was his only grandchild, and they had what she called a “special relationship.”
“He really inspired me. He passed away in 2023 before I got this job,” Arms said. “One of his most famous pieces was ‘I Never Saw Another Butterfly,’ which used the poems of children in concentration camps … that inspired me to go into the field.”
At Gratz, the West Philadelphia resident works directly on projects that address the legacy of the Holocaust. She oversees the school’s Youth Symposium on the Holocaust, a creative arts competition that features art addressing the Holocaust, and is the coordinator for the Gratz Dimensions in Testimony Holocaust education exhibits. It’s not easy work, but she feels compelled to do it.
“It’s very intense and it is very rewarding,” Arms said. “I’ve learned so much over the past year and a half. I’m also in the Gratz master’s program for Holocaust and genocide studies, so I am a staff member and also a student.”
That unique dynamic makes Arms a dual member of the Gratz community. She said that the school’s investment in online learning infrastructure is largely why this is possible.
“All of our programs are online, but that’s really helpful for people who work full time. That brings a lot of flexibility to the program, and we’re still able to connect in a virtual space and hear about what everyone’s doing,” Arms said. “I feel like Gratz really builds a great community online.”
The Mordechai Anielewicz Creative Arts Competition, hosted by Gratz, is an aspect of the job that Arms is particularly appreciative of. She gets to see young people express their thoughts on the Holocaust and its legacy through 2D and 3D art, poetry, prose, music, dance and other media.
The students take part in an exhibition and award ceremony at the end of the year, and Arms said that she thinks the contest is a great way to engage younger audiences on a topic as difficult as the Holocaust.
“I come from a family of artists, and so that’s always how I express myself creatively as well. I think it gives a lot of flexibility for students who might not want to write a research paper, who might want to use different mediums, who might want to connect what’s happening in the world right now to what they’re learning in class. And I think it gives them a lot of power. I think that it gives them a lot of freedom,” she said.
Arms said that getting to be a part of these students’ journeys is valuable to her, as their work is thought provoking and topical.
“The students are very bright, and they’re very in tune to what’s happening in the world right now,” she said. “They’re expressing themselves through this art project, and I feel lucky that I’m able to provide that for them.”
Arms and the Gratz team are also in the early stages of recruiting members for a new fellowship for emerging leaders in the Black and Jewish communities. Rising 10th through 12th graders will be able to apply and discuss what their corresponding identities mean to them, particularly in a Philadelphia context, with the chosen group coming together for trips to cultural institutions, historical sites and more.
“We’re hoping to have a relatively small cohort of students throughout the school year. We also hope to bring in leaders and activists in the social justice community and scholars. We have a lot of part-time teachers who are on faculty who are passionate about this and who know a lot, who are doing a lot of research in the field currently,” Arms said. “We’re hoping to have some people come in and talk to the students in person [so they can] really discover what activism means for them and how they can help provide for their communities and make a difference.”
For Arms, Philadelphia is home, and her family’s legacy plays a big part in who she is today. She wants to continue to work hard on what matters to her.
“I love the people that I work with, and in the future, I hope to use that experience and this knowledge that I’m getting to go into the field, more in an academic sense, to raise awareness for human rights violations around the world,” Arms said.