Lilly Grant enables PES teacher to study Holocaust in Germany, Poland
(Talk of the Town file photo) Michelle Ball, below, a local teacher, will be traveling abroad to study the Holocaust.
By Jennifer Zartman Romano
Pierceton Elementary School teacher, Michelle Ball, was recently named as a recipient of the Indiana Lilly Endowment. Ball is a Columbia City resident, the daughter of Ned and Alma Freeman and the wife of Pat Ball. 
Funded under the Lilly 2010 Teacher Creativity Fellowship Program, Ball will be traveling to Germany and Poland to study the Holocaust this summer.
Ball will be retracing the footsteps of Anne Frank, traveling to her birthplace in Frankfurt, Germany, and to Prinsengracht 263, the secret annex where the Frank family went into hiding in 1942 to escape the Nazis.
Ball will also visit Hannover, Germany, where Frank died at the Bergen-Belsen camp. She will later travel to Poland, studying Auschwitz II-Brikenau, and the location where Otto Frank was liberated by the Russians in January of 1945.
Ball's journey is supported in an effort to keep the memory and lessons of Holocaust history alive and to teach students concepts that will forever change their world view. Ball will take what she has learned in Germany and Poland and enrich the learning experience of her students.