MERRILLVILLE | Merrillville High School juniors and seniors learned about the Holocaust in their history classes, but a tour of the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., helped make the tragedy real for the group.

Eighteen members of STAND, or Students Together and Naturally Diverse, visited Washington from April 30 to May 4, getting an intensive lesson on the topics of genocide and human rights violations.

The group made a presentation to U.S. History and English classes Thursday at Merrillville High, reaching more than 500 students and teachers with video footage and slides about the Holocaust and current human rights abuses in the Darfur region of Sudan.

They focused on the meaning of genocide and what that policy meant to Jews and the people of Darfur.

Juniors Courtney Bargfeldt, 17, and Johnathan Wallace, 17, said they learned a lot from the visit to the nation's capital and found the experience very moving.

"I know Hitler recorded many of the things that he did to the Jews, but when you look at it in the museum and you see how the people suffered, it was awful," Bargfeldt said.

Wallace said the group talked to an 87-year-old Holocaust survivor named Robert Behr, who volunteered at the museum and answered questions about his experiences.

"He told us they called him the 'angel of death' because although he was Jewish, he was the one responsible for telling people they were being moved to another location, meaning they were going to the gas chamber or would be shot to death," Wallace said.

While in Washington, the students also visited the Save the Darfur Coalition, talking to survivor Abu Asal Abu Asal, who compared the situation in Darfur with the Holocaust.