These Great United States of Ours

We talked today about the United States and the role our country played in the Holocaust. What are your feeling about this topic? Also consider what you see as the United States' role in current world affairs.

Haunting...

Some of you are wanting another post to respond to (because THREE wasn't enough last week...), so here is something I wanted you all to look at anyway. The title above is a weblink. These people found artwork of Auschwitz and sent them to this photographer for him to go and take "now" pictures of the same places pictured in the artwork. We are going to talk a little next week (or the end of this week) about Holocaust Denial. There are bazillions of arguments against it, but this website to me gives another haunting arguement against the deniers. What are your reactions to the website?

Do Not Mourn Me

We read John Donne's "A Valediction: Forbidding Mourning" in AP. Since they, too, are going on a journey soon and leaving things and people behind, they wrote their own versions of this poem. I really liked Brock's version because I felt like it embodied the fresh outlook on life that seniors hopefully have at this point in their lives, that belief that nothing can stop them from achieving their goals.  My very favorite part is the end where he acknowledges that even though he may not become famous, he will still be successful through hard work and committment.

Do not mourn me when I am gone,
For I will be one step closer to my dreams.
I'll write you the most beautiful songs,
And try to figure out what this life means.

When you think of my journey,
Do not shed a single tear,
You should just be happy for me,
And embrace me as you embrace your fears.

I may one day soon return,
To this town I once called home,
The memory of this place will forever burn
As I travel to a new town all alone.

But I am not worried,
I've spent my whole life for this
No I am not discouraged,
I've spent my whole life for this.

So goodbye, and farewell,
I hope that you see my name on billboard signs,
Wouldn't that be swell,
I'll become famous because of these songs of mine.

And if not I'll still likely succeed,
And work hard, to provide for my every need.

Love and Anguish

Several people showed this in their presentations. I am very curious as to what you all see in this sculpture. I cannot figure out what my interpretation is. You can't see it from this side, but the large arm has a number on it. Therefore, it apparently represents a victim. The people around it? I don't know. I want to hear your interpretations of this one.

Raining Death

I told you that there were three exhibits that affected me most in this visit to the USHMM. The first was the Tower of Faces, which I talked about. The second was the railcar. I have walked through that car at least eight to nine other times and it always feels uneasy, but this time was different. I was alone at that time in the Museum and I just stood, for about ten minutes, in the car. The air kind of changes when you step in. It is also very musty and stale with age. I stood there, and I looked at the one high window which was boarded up, and I imagined how it must have felt. They had their belongings, were with family in many cases, and probably felt like they were just being relocated. But little did they know, those moments, hours, in that train were the last they would spend with their loved ones. I can't imagine the last memory I had of Kraig and the girls being crammed together in a cattlecar, like animals, breathing that stale air. I found this picture online of the inside of the car and it is just another example of how carefully these are thought out. You have to be diligent in looking, but each photograph, each exhibit, each quote, has been carefully planned. In this photograph you can see through the car to the giant photograph beyond. Wow.

The last exhibit that struck me was a new one, at least new since my last trip in November of '06. They had a glass cabinet with three shelves in it on one side of the passageway and another one just like it on the other side. The one on the left had a shelf of prayer shawls, a shelf of toothbrushes and combs, and a shelf of umbrellas. The one on the opposite side had a shelf of kitchen utensils, one of razors, and one of scissors. The explanation read that these were things that were found in the luggage at the camps. I don't know why, but the pile of spindly, aged umbrellas got me. They looked almost skeletal, for one. Secondly, as a person who does not usually remember to go places prepared (I didn't even take an umbrella to DC), I just was struck by the fact that they had NO IDEA what was happening to them. They took UMBRELLAS, for heaven's sake, to a DEATH CAMP. People don't pack kitchen utensils and scissors for trips. They pack them when they are moving away. And they sure don't take umbrellas to their executions. How utterly unprepared, how little they knew, how caught off guard they must have been... it is heartbreaking.

Memorials

I cannot tell you all how much I enjoyed your presentations on the Memorials. It's like everything else we are doing in that I have no idea how it will go until we do it. I appreciate your willingness to be guinea pigs in my experimentation for this course. The coolest thing was, even though some Memorials were presented several times, you all had different insight into them. It was wonderful. I am including some pictures I found from the exhibit I told you about at the Museum. It was the one Hillary and Leah talked about. I would welcome any comments you have about those presentations. I will post another thing for you to also comment on, if you wish.

Blended Poetry Based on The Cage

Holocaust Literature created blended poems by responding to several prompts from me, then highlighting passages from The Cage that spoke to them. The poems consist of one line by Ruth Minsky Sender, then one line by the student, back and forth. I wanted to post a couple of them on here.

By Ruth Minsky Sender and Brian Moran
A world of love and peace
Enjoy life to the fullest
Gives new energy
To give my best
To plan for a better, brighter tomorrow
Becoming a great parent
This day will come
A loving family
How lovely it must be
Being truthful and honest
It is good to be alive
Learning how to become a better person


By Ruth Minsky Sender and Colleen Skelly
Sweet smell of lilac in full bloom
Big oak trees swaying in the breeze
A gentle breeze coming through the open window caresses my face
Jesus sitting under the tree with His arms open, waiting for me
I speak to him of a tomorrow that is coming for all of us
The sun coming through the trees
A world of love and peace
My mother, my rock, my sisters, my strength
I must carry them in my heart, they are only memories of another life
My mother is my courage, my sisters are my strength



By Ruth Minsky Sender and Gage Reason
A gentle breeze coming through the open window caresses my face
I have the nicest lawn in the neighborhood
Such beauty; I hold my breath
and I remember the white sands of Destin.
It is good to be alive.
Inspiration to live and to rise above
How wonderful it is to be free.
I think of the palatial feasts on Thanksgiving,
No more hunger
The serenity of life,
A world of love and peace.

Lest Innocent Blood Be Shed

This is another highly acclaimed book about the Holocaust. This group will use this post for your discussion.

Survival in Auschwitz

Primo Levi is one of the leading Holocaust writers. This memoir is very highly acclaimed. That group needs to use this post as a forum for your online discussion over the book.

Dry Tears

The autographical account of the childhood/early adolescence of a young girl in Poland, this book appears on almost every list of suggested reading about the Holocaust. For those of you who are in this group, use this post as your discussion forum.

Milkweed

The only book in our selections that is fiction, this book reads almost like a detective story. Please use this post for your discussion over this novel.

In My Hands

This is a memoir about a Polish (Catholic) teenager who becomes a rescuer during the Holocaust. If this is your book, please use this post as the forum for your discussion.

I Have Lived a Thousand Years

This memoir by a teenager who survived Auschwitz is a highly acclaimed work of young adult literature. Please use this post for your discussion if you are in this book group.

Holocaust Lit: Your Input Needed

Hey guys, hello from West Virginia. I got an email from Mr. Fisher of the Greenway after you all left on Friday and we need to have a response for him very soon. Here's the deal: the Greenway Board has essentially given the go-ahead for a Memorial Garden near CHS. However, we have to propose a plan to him within the week. I will be gone at the end of the week, so this has to be fast. The bench that we will have to use (if we want a bench, which I think we do) is $1000. I just got my DC debt paid for on Friday with the jeans day ($1000 raised in a month or two, thank you very much). So, I am ready to acrue another debt as long as you all agree to be my partners in fundraising. What I need from you is responses (preferably on the blog, though we will discuss it on Monday in class) in three areas.

Number one, are we positive this is something we want to do? If we do it, it has to be done well. Are we all in agreement to put in whatever it takes?

Secondly, what exactly do we want our "garden" to contain? Landscaping? I know that Elizabeth had a plan for that. The bench, I suppose. A plaque? Some of your stepping stones? The answer to this question will give us a budget, which we will need to answer the following question.

Finally, the fundraising issue... how much do we need? How are we going to get it? How soon do we need it? What connections do we have? Do we want to ask for business donations (by "we" here, I mean "you")? Do we want to try to sell something (I am almost over selling, quite frankly)? Is there a place where we could do a bake sale (a sports game, something?)? Are any of our spring teams willing to work with us at all (Robby, Adam, Scott, all of you track people)? I have pretty much exhausted all of my resources for the DC trip. The people I know are tired of seeing me coming. It is going to fall on you all. I know at one point we had mentioned a Memory Walk. Would that be an option for having people sponsor you and the proceeds go toward the garden? Or did we want that money to be used to HELP some cause, in tribute to the memory of the Holocaust?

I need some answers, people. I'll be working on a plan based on your responses to this blog during the five hour car ride tomorrow. So give me something to work with, okay? Yall are great, thank you!

Hey Kieley, sorry no graphics. I am on a borrowed computer. :(

Their Stories

English II had a unique opportunity.  We partnered with Mrs. Adam's Desktop Publishing Class and are working on oral histories of residents of Garden Plaza.  Students went down on Tuesday to do six interviews of seven very interesting individuals.  The residents seemed to enjoy their time with us and my students made me proud!  One gentleman was ninety-two and had seen quite a lot of history in his life!  Another couple made the girls swoon when they told them that they were high school sweethearts, broke up and married other people, had families, then, when their spouses died,  they married each other two and a half years ago.  It was a great opportunity for us.  

"Escape from Sobibor"

“Most people only dream their nightmares. However, I and my fellow survivors actually lived this experience,” said Philip Bialowitz, one of only seven remaining survivors of the Nazi extermination camp, Sobibor, where an estimated 250,000 Jews, including most of his family, were murdered. “We fought hard for our dignity and our lives. The inhumanity of the Nazis knew no limits.”

“Shema” by Primo Levi

You who live secure
In your warm houses
Who return at evening to find
Hot food and friendly faces:

Consider whether this is a man,
Who labors in the mud
Who knows no peace
Who fights for a crust of bread
Who dies at a yes or a no.
Consider whether this is a woman,
Without hair or name
With no more strength to remember
Eyes empty and womb cold
As a frog in winter.

Consider that this has been:
I commend these words to you.
Engrave them on your hearts
When you are in your house, when
you walk on your way,
When you go to bed, when you rise.
Repeat them to your children.
Or may your house crumble,
Disease renders you powerless,
Your offspring avert their faces from you.

The title of this post is a link to a website about Philip Bialowitz where I got this information.  Any response to his story, the movie, the poem?

The Passionate AP Students to...

We read "The Passionate Shepherd to His Love," then read "The Nymph's Reply to the Shepherd." My kids then wrote their own versions of one of those two poems, or a shepherd's second response to the nymph. Here are a few of the best:

"Shepherd's Response to the Nymph" by Mary Gallagher
I'm sorry you got the wrong idea honey
I promise I wasn't trying to be funny
I tried to give you a beautiful dwelling
But all I see is your doubt swelling.

How can you not see my sincere love
I just want to treat you like a dove.
If you only knew how much you mean to me,
You would run away and mine you would be.

If you let me, I will be your stud
And all you have to do is watch flowers bud.
We can go watch the waterfall
And then listen to the birds call.

Apparently you don't like the rosebed,
What, my dear, would you want instead?
You don't even like the clothes of wool,
I, myself, thought they were very cool.

I don't think I'll ever be good enough for you
After what I did, I should hit you with my shoe.
For some reason, I'm still infatuated.
Man I knew I should have waited.

Now I'm going to let it be your choice
I hope by the end of the night I hear your voice.
I want you to know how much you mean to me
Hopefully you'll be the last person I see.

"The Passionate Politician to his People" by Zye Hooks
When the time for change is near,
And the people are longing for hope,
The era of the politics of fear,
Is near the end of its rope.

A government must form,
To promote the people desires,
For an administration that meets societal norms,
And promises to punish liars.

Negative attacks and media bias,
Signal the fears of those who favor the status quo,
That something is happening to the few who are pious,
The authoritarian regime is about to go

So let us celebrate over the new change,
And over the return of democracy that is being arranged.

What Cause will You Commit to?

In the Holocaust Lit class, Sonja DuBois challenged them to pick one cause to devote their time, energy, and resources to. As you age, there will be lots of requests and demands of you for social causes and charities. One lesson of the Holocaust is that "The only thing necessary for evil to triumph is for good men to stand by and do nothing." (Edmund Burke) We are responsible, throughout our lives, as citizens of a democracy, of a society, for doing our best to correct injustices around us. Too often we do one of two things: we either ignore these problems or we try to give a little to everything to ease our guilty consciences. As Sonja so eloquently pointed out, imagine if each person chose ONE cause and devoted him or herself to it for life?

Obviously my passion is respect for your fellow man. I have devoted myself as an educator to a study of the Holocaust in the hope of educating those around me about making the world a safer place. I feel that every human being deserves respect. As far as my "cause", beyond being a Holocaust educator, I am committed to a ministry for abused and neglected children called Royal Family Ministries. My church does a camp every summer for nearly forty children in the foster care systems of Bradley, Hamilton, and McMinn counties. I have served as a counselor at that camp almost every year since its inception in 1999. This is our tenth year for Royal Family Kids Camp, and we have expanded that ministry to include a middle school retreat about five years ago. I serve on the Royal Family board at my church, Kraig and I are both counselors, and we have chosen to make this ministry the source of our financial support. You know that I try not to ask you to do anything I would not/am not doing, so I wanted to answer the question that follows before I asked you to.

My question to you is, what is your cause going to be? What are you passionate about? What do you see as something that merits your time, energy, and resources? Or are YOU going to stand by and do nothing?

Your Responsibility

You all had an opportunity on Thursday to do something that very few people in your generation have gotten to do, and fewer and fewer people in the future will do. You (Holocaust Lit and English II) got to hear the story of Sonja DuBois, a survivor of the Holocaust. I really don't want to post a bunch of questions on here or put words in your mouths. I mainly want to hear your response to her story.

I will tell you that I was so interested in what she said about the moment that she decided to start sharing her story with others was when she saw the Bible study about Esther and realized that she, too, lived a double life. And just like Esther, there were lots of people involved in saving Sonja. I, as a parent, cannot imagine what her parents must have felt when they left her at the station, her mother who put the necklace around her neck, and then walked away. Even if I KNEW, beyond a shadow of a doubt, that Emma and Kelsey would be safer left behind (and her parents didn't KNOW), I cannot fathom what it would feel like to put them in the arms of a stranger to them and walk away, not knowing what would become of them. The pain they must have suffered at that moment probably hurt so much more than the death they encountered later. I also was staggered by how much we take for granted with our own lives, in that we all have people who can tell our life stories, who we look like, act like, and so on. She has no one in her life who can do that for her.

I said I wasn't going to put words in your mouths and I guess I did. I could probably write forever about my response to her story and the feelings it stirred in me. She was so arresting, such a powerful speaker, yet so approachable. But now, the responsibility lies with you and me. We are among the few people who have heard first hand the story of a Holocaust survivor. What, now, will we do with it? Sonja's story lives on with us. Her parents live on in us, because we know the sacrifice they made so that she could live to tell. It is your duty, your obligation, to bear witness when the time comes that no one is alive to say, "I was there. It happened to my family. I saw the camps. I lived it." YOU will have to stand up and say, "I heard the story of a survivor. I saw the necklace her mother left her, saw the one surviving photograph of her parents." It did happen, and we have to make sure that the lessons learned are applied to our daily lives.

I guess that's my sermon for the day.