Rebellious Thoughts of a Woman

Teaching about the Holocaust

In the school where I teach, we read Night, Elie Wiesel’s first memoir of the Holocaust. For me, reading Night and having my students learn about the Holocaust amounts to a mission.  Other teachers, though, find it a pain, a bother. They don’t understand all of the terms, which, I guess, means that they don’t want to learn concepts that are alien to them. I’m pretty sure they won’t be excommunicated from any church which they don’t attend if they learn what Shabbos means or what Kabbalah refers to. It seems that they want to stick to analyzing characters in a neat way as opposed to this small plunk of vicious reality that cannot be analyzed for character development.

It is so utterly wrong that the one Jewish member on the team (or the one who identifies as Jewish) is the one who finds true purpose in this unit. After all, do I teach because children need to know how to identify a metaphor, or do I teach because children need the tools to think and express themselves? It is so very wrong that people think, apparently, that since it didn’t happen to their people then they don’t need to relate to it. Or, worse yet, perhaps because it’s too much for them—too depressing, too horrifying, too outside of any comfort zone—they rush through it to fulfill a requirement but no more.

Generally, there is a research component to this unit. I have found it difficult to oversee this project because most kids want to find a single website that will give them answers to the questions they need to consider, yet I, I can’t help it, I want them to take it  more seriously than the means to a grade. So this year I will try a different way to reach inside those teen walls of indifference. This year each student will be assigned an event or place, and then research it and—this is the change—read original source material from people who lived through “their” event. I’m hoping that these personal stories will bridge the gap between doing schoolwork and connecting to history.

At the same time, other teachers have decided that this year they are going to focus on German propaganda. They will focus on how the Nazis led the Germans to follow them, to believe them, to be captivated by their tales of how lovely it is to be us, Aryans, and how hateful it is to be them, the Jews, or anyone who does not look as we say they should or behave as we say they should or believe what we say they should. And that is good, but it feels wrong. Maybe they are right, since our focus is supposed to be on language and that, really, is what we teach. But really, doesn’t this make the students focus on the poor Germans who were manipulated by the evil Nazis. Where in this focus are the victims—the people who were defiled, tortured, shot, gassed by those who believed and those who were too cowardly to not believe? Where is space for the victims of the “mislead”? Will they learn that excuses are more powerful than actions?

I tell myself that any learning and thinking about what happened during the Holocaust is positive; that I should not think that there is anything wrong with their focus. And yet it makes me uncomfortable. Does it come down to these teachers not being Jewish and so not feeling, intrinsically, the honor/importance that they have been given to transmit this lesson to a generation of citizens of the world? Maybe I’m wrong. But it doesn’t feel that way.

How are we to ever get to “never again”—that violent acting out of group hatred or fear—if our teachers can’t put themselves in another person’s shoes, even if those shoes have been preserved in monstrous piles never to be forgotten?

 

Piles of shoes that belonged to prisoners killed in the gas chambers at Auschwitz-Birkenau. Poland, wartime. — United States Holocaust Memorial Museum #0009 

Holocaust Memorial Day 2011 5771

I’ve been reading The Jews of Russia and Poland: A Bird’s-eye View of their History and Culture by Dr. Israel Friedlander, which was published in 1920, for the past few days. I took it out of my temple library because I’m interested in tormenting myself by reading about how the Jews have been maligned throughout history. The why of that: well, it puzzles me and depresses me--and captivates me. It’s the need to keep probing a wound or debility or sickness that the world has, and which it has continually imposed upon the Jews, and which, even though I am an American Jew and all is seemingly well, I cannot ignore. The other books I took out were about the Spanish Inquisition; the Holocaust; and, for a change, some uplifting Jewish-reading about the Jewish Khazars, a people in the Caucasus region who converted to Judaism in the mid-eighth century. I also took that slim, light blue-cloth-covered book because we are Friedlanders on the maternal side of my family.

I didn’t realize that yesterday was Holocaust Memorial Day, but it does seem fitting to read this book that traces and explains the anti-Semitism of the region—from the pre-Holocaust perspective—at this time. My reading, up to page 110 (another 100 pages of sadness to go before the even more devastating sadness that follows the writing of this book; oh, what would Mr. Friedlander have said, if he hadn’t had been murdered in 1920 when he went to distribute funds to starving Jews in Poland and the Ukraine as a result of World War I) showcases that there is absolutely no SURPRISE! that the Holocaust happened—not the immense devastation, not the vast number of participants and “innocent” bystanders, not the inhumanity of the supposed humane, and certainly not the belief bred from century upon century of church teachings and noble decrees and violent pogroms and debilitating laws, and the “this, too, will pass” survival stance of the Jews. It’s been a reading that traces a terrible trail of hatred, denigration and oppression. And why I take it to bed at night with me is a wonder.

The key to far too much that really is incomprehensible, because what is religion or even culture, after all, except a way or a system that is supposed to help people and not result in the deformity of their personalities in a cult of adherence, is found in this decree “the reason for the existence of the Jews is that they might remind us of the tortures of the Saviour, and by their abject and miserable condition might serve as an example of the just chastisement of God inflicted upon the infidels” (Friedlander 57). I know, not much new, but still, startling to read the bluntness of then—at least a spade was called a spade. But why am I here, in Virginia, thinking and writing about this? Why not say, “Thank goodness that that’s the past”? Because, it seems, “history repeats itself” is truer than “we need to learn about the past in order to prevent it from repeating itself” because the cycle seems to be on auto-pilot.

What is the purpose of a life? Is it to embody an ideal or embrace an idea? Why are we so weak that we can’t find our hearts within our minds? Is there really something that separates people? Are the pains that those closest to us impose upon us so hard to bear and acknowledge that we seek the “other” for a safe distance to express our own pain? Is there such a thing as a peaceful society? Have weapons ever only been used to search for food?

There is so much that is incomprehensible. Unfortunately, those things that cannot be comprehended can be felt.

I have sat here for hours trying to come up with some point that raises my thoughts to a place above or beyond where my thinking began. But I am still here; still listening to the same music (Ofra Haza) and still sitting at my dining room table because moving to the more comfortable couch seems wrong. I have reached no point. I am where Dr. Friedlander left me when I closed his book last night after reading that Catherine the Great “laid the foundations of Jewish rightlessness. Succeeding emperors have built upon these foundations” (Friedlander 112).

The sky is gray. I am on my third snow day because of Wednesday’s snowstorm. A few hours ago my younger daughter went to her father’s house. And Kenny went to work this morning. I am home alone for the first time in a while. It would have been wise to go out and get my haircut or get a sexy nightgown (I’m still on my old flannel pajamas).

Maybe I should still go out; there is time before he comes home for me to move my mood and mind from boundless and inscrutable sorrow. Nothing will be solved this afternoon. I will not uncover how to transform the cruelty in people’s hearts. I will not uncover the formula for “never again.” I will simply continue being the person I am: a person whose heart aches within its own walls, wishing it could find a way for us to live in peace and comprehension.

Strength and Love

Strength and thoughts and prayers of love and healing and comfort to my father who is battling cancer--and to all those and their loved ones who are sick.

Mi Sheberakh (The Jewish Prayer for Healing)
May the One who blessed our ancestors--Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, Sarah, Rebecca, Rachel, and Leah--bless and heal those who are ill. May God overflow with compassion upon them, to restore them, to heal them, to strengthen them, to enliven them. That God will send them, speedily, a complete healing--healing of the soul and healing of the body--along with all the ill, among the people of Israel and all humankind, soon, speedily, without delay, and let us all say: Amen!