NEWPORT NEWS — Disobeying orders may not sound like part of the academic curriculum at the U.S. Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. But that's exactly what Lt. Col. Mark Nataupsky had his students pondering when he taught psychology at the academy about 20 years ago.
''All of your training is how to obey, obey, obey,'' Nataupsky told his class. ''You need to decide right now when you will disobey an order and follow the consequences and when you will obey an order and follow the consequences.''
Nataupsky, now a 55-year-old retired officer living in Newport News, lost most of his extended family in the Holocaust. He wants to remind people that blind obedience to Nazi authority cost the world 6 million Jews and 6 million other victims under Adolf Hitler's reign of terror.
His latest forum is the Holocaust Teacher Resource Center, a Web site that Nataupsky manages from his home. Internet users have visited the site more than 117,000 times since the resource center went online in June 1996, Nataupsky says.
He hopes that number will rapidly increase in commemoration of Holocaust Memorial Day, or Yom Hoshoa, this Thursday.
The Web site contains photos and textual information taken, with permission, from a variety of resources, including the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. The site also offers lesson plans, book reviews, bibliographies and information about Holocaust exhibits and lectures.
The information is available free to teachers, students and the general public, Nataupsky says.
''If the Holocaust can happen to one group of people, it can happen to another,'' he says. ''That's why we have to be so vigilant to teach about the Holocaust.''
About a dozen states have passed laws mandating Holocaust education, Nataupsky says. Virginia requires students to learn about the Holocaust and offers an optional curriculum developed eight years ago by the Virginia Department of Education and several Jewish and professional organizations, says Margaret Roberts, director of community relations for the department.
But not every state offers a Holocaust curriculum. Many teachers have a hard time finding materials designed to teach children about the Holocaust, Nataupsky says.
Teachers and net surfers across the country and around the world have logged their names into the ''guest book'' of the Holocaust Teacher Resource Center, says Nataupsky, who has tracked users from 23 different countries as far away as Australia and Iceland.
Kathy Pogue, who teaches a Christian girl's club at her church in Bonneterre, Mo., said she recently found Nataupsky's Web site while surfing the Internet for Holocaust material.
''I really wanted the girls to know what the Holocaust is because most of them don't have the slightest idea,'' Pogue says. ''We live in a community where there are no Jewish people.''
Pogue pulled some stories from Holocaust survivors off the Web site, printed them out and read them aloud to her class. The details of the atrocities in the concentration camps got the girls' attention.
''These stories need to be told,'' Pogue says.
Closer to home, sixth-grade students from the Williams School in Norfolk will be using lesson plans from the Holocaust Teacher's Resource Center next week when they study how people have lived honorably in dishonorable environments such as the concentration camps.
Nataupsky hopes to expand his Web site to include more information. But finances are tight.
Nataupsky has no mailing list of donors. He used his own money to start the nonprofit Holocaust Education Foundation as a funding mechanism for the Web site. But the foundation has only $800 in assets in the bank, Nataupsky says. Meanwhile, the resource center has more than $8,000 in outstanding bills.
It's a bare-bones operation for Nataupsky, who is not paid to manage the site and uses an outdated computer in his home office.
Nataupsky relied on the help of Richard Fairman, a friend and fellow congregation member at Rodef Sholom Temple in Hampton, to design the Web site. Fairman is president of Interactive Productions, a multimedia training and development company in Newport News.
SEVAnet, a nonprofit operation based at Christopher Newport University, hosts the Holocaust Teacher Resource Center on its Web server for free. Most of the Web site's expenses involve scanning and formatting printed material from books and brochures for the Web site, Nataupsky says.
The financial challenges don't seem to get Nataupsky down. Whenever he responds to a request from a student - even if it's as simple as, ''Send me some information about the Holocaust'' - Nataupsky feels like he's taking one small step toward preventing a repeat of one of humankind's worst atrocities.
''That makes a lot of days worthwhile.''
VIRGINIA HOLOCAUST MUSEUM
213 Roseneath Road
The museum tells the story of the Holocaust and its victims, both surviving and deceased, in a way that works to increase understanding of the toll that prejudice takes on the human family. Exhibit looks at one family that survived the Nazi persecution and immigrated to Richmond.
Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Monday-Friday; 2-5 p.m. Saturday and noon-5 p.m. Sunday. Closed all Jewish holidays. Admission is free.
THE U.S. HOLOCAUST MEMORIAL MUSEUM
100 Raoul Wallenberg Place
Open 10 a.m.-5:30 p.m. daily; closed Yom Kippur and Christmas Day. Admission is free.
Timed-entry tickets available at museum or through Protix, (703) 218-6500 or (800) 400-9373 (Protix charges a processing fee for tickets)
Metro subway station: Smithsonian
THE MUSEUM OF JEWISH HERITAGE: A LIVING MEMORIAL TO THE HOLOCAUST
18 First Place
Battery Park City, New York
(212) 268-1800 for information
(800) 307-4007 for tickets
Open 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Sunday through Wednesday; 9 a.m.-8 p.m. Thursday; 9 a.m.-2 p.m. Friday. Closed Saturdays and Jewish holidays. Admission is $7 for adults; $5 for seniors and students.