Keeper of the Stories

So, last week before I left for this trip, I shared a post about my deep instinct to document, to write, to share, to record. I’ve always been a journal-keeper, photo-taker, letter-writer, and now social media-documenter.

The moment that probably captured me most in Yad Vashem was when we were in the Warsaw portion and Ephraim was talking to us about the milk cans. (For those unfamiliar with this story, the inhabitants of the Warsaw Ghetto took it upon themselves to record and document the lives of those living in the ghetto. Then they preserved them in milk cans and buried them. The cans were found years later and provide historical documentation of those in the ghetto.)

This need to preserve is unique to humans, but it is not unique to a certain people group. We want to be remembered. We want our loved ones to be remembered. We all have a story and our individual stories create the story of humankind. He told the story of Simon Dubnow, a Jewish historian who wrote an eight volume history of the Jewish people plus several other books. As he was being lead away to be shot, he turned and yelled, “Juden! Shraybn!” “Jews! Write it down!”

It took my breath away in that moment, but the more time I have reflected on it, the more I have been arrested by those words. His time on this earth was over. But even in that moment, he had the presence of mind to remind those around him to remember. And the only reliable form of memory is documentation.

I always tell my students that I feel a tremendous responsibility to record any and all accounts I hear of Holocaust events so that I can pass them on to the people in my classroom, those around me, the people in my home. In that way, I see myself as a keeper of their stories, the ones who are either already no longer with us or who don’t have much time left on this earth. As I share with my students, THEY become the keeper of the stories as well. It’s how WE are “writing it down”.

And to take all of this one step further, each of the teens in my classroom has a story of his or her own. I want them to feel safe to share their stories through discussion and journaling, to realize the value of their lives and their stories, and to preserve them for future generations. It’s why I type things my kids say into a notes document on my phone, why I share funny things they do on fb, why I spend time blogging, why I have documented every moment of this trip, why I basically typed a transcript into my phone of every word Ephraim said during our museum tour…. To Remember. People! Write it down!