RIALTO >> Ninth-graders’ second time studying the Holocaust in a less than a year was harrowing but ultimately rewarding, according to three of the ninth-grade teachers tasked with helping undo the damage done by a controversial districtwide assignment last spring.

“They came out better for it on the other end,” said Eisenhower High teacher Lance Riley.

Eight now-ninth-grade students presented their response to Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel’s autobiographical novel “Night” at Wednesday night’s Rialto Unified school board meeting. The students’ response was part of the district’s “Remembrance and Beyond” presentation on what’s been done to repair the damage of last spring’s infamous Holocaust essay assignment.

Last spring, Rialto Unified’s 2,000 eighth-graders were required to do an in-class essay on whether or not the Holocaust was a hoax. When word of the assignment got out, there was an international outcry and near-universal condemnation.

Since then, the eighth-graders visited the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles and have been given copies of the memoir of another Holocaust survivor by his widow.

This fall’s “Night” assignment, which had students look at contemporary events to illustrate aspects of the novel, was the final part of a district plan meant to correct the damage.

This time around was different than students tackling a theatrical excerpt of “The Diary of Anne Frank” last spring.

“It hadn’t been taught, from their perspective, as a Holocaust unit,” Riley said. “It was taught as a drama unit.”

This fall, the teachers delved into the context and history of the Holocaust and the pre-existing climate of prejudice and anti-Semitism in Europe before World War II.

“My students were very excited about learning about it in a different context,” said Eisenhower High teacher Samalu Rodriguez.

The ninth-grade assignments were centered around Wiesel’s book. The author was 15 years old when his family was sent to the Auschwitz concentration camp in Poland.

“They were really able to identify with Elie because he was their age,” Rodriguez said. “There were several times we had to pass the tissues around.”

And the teachers placed the Holocaust in the context of other oppression, such as the Tiananmen Square massacre of 1989, and slavery in the 21st century, explaining that evil isn’t a historical fact but remains a part of the modern world.

The treatment of child and infant prisoners — and the brutal ways the Nazis killed them and disposed of their bodies — hit home in Riley’s class.

“There wasn’t a dry eye in the room,” he said.

The students were up for the challenge and were even thirsty for more on the Holocaust and other genocides, according to Carter High teacher Caroline Collins.

“I think we make the mistake of not realizing the depths that our kids have,” she said.

Students also received instruction on evaluating sources and double-checking the information they find online. Back in the spring, students had been given three so-called “credible sources” to refer to for their in-class assignment on whether or not the Holocaust was a hoax, including a printout from an Australian Holocaust denial website.

“Just because it’s on the Internet doesn’t mean it’s true,” Collins said.

Although district officials initially said no students had denied the Holocaust occurred, a review of the essays, obtained through the California Public Records Act, revealed that dozens of students had done so.

Three of those students ended up in Riley’s class at Eisenhower High this year. Doing this fall’s assignment cemented the reality of the Holocaust for them.

“One of them broke down in tears and said ‘I don’t know why I wrote that,’ ” Riley said.

He told his students the district was owning up to what school board member Joseph Martinez called an “epic fail” in July: “For the mistake that was made, we’re here and we’re owning it.”

The subject of man’s inhumanity to man is commonly taught to freshman in the fall, but “Night” was in a league of its own in terms of the intensity and seriousness of the subject matter.

“It’s is emotional,” Riley said. “I teach the same thing five times a day. … By the fifth time, you’ve taught it, you’re emotionally spent.”

After teaching “Night” all day, he said, he’d sometimes close his classroom door and sit at his desk and cry.

Note: According to Riley, Eisenhower ninth grade English teachers would be “super excited” about taking part in the Anti-Defamation League’s “Echoes and Reflections” training. An earlier version of this story inaccurately attributed what he thought teachers would be excited about, he said Friday.