Today was just.... A perfect answer to the way I was feeling last night. We started with a session on creating a unit on a pre-war community, which was quite good. From that point, we spent an hour in the resource center where I found entirely too many films I want to use to fit into my Holocaust class. smile emoticon I found two incredible ones on my very favorite person from this period, Janusz Korczak. I kept tearing up watching them. He is my hero in every sense of the word.
After lunch, we had time in the Reflection Center and I decided I could be a better teacher if I had an awesome screen in the floor of my classroom where I could send discussion questions and such. (Also, if I had low lights and soft music. I might be able to make those happen, though.) But seriously, although the Reflection Center isn't accessible online, it gave me some great pedagogic ideas.
From there, we toured the outside memorials: the Destruction to Rebirth art, the Warsaw memorial, the rail car (Memorial to Deportees), and finally down to the Valley of the Communities.
The cattle car (Memorial to Deportees, or, as I call it, “Journey to Nowhere”) at Yad Vashem is striking. Ephraim was sharing with us the reaction on the part of some of the survivors when the cattle car was brought to the museum. It was a sensitive and traumatic sight for many of them. He said the timing coincided with the start of the first Gulf War. When that war started, gas masks were issued to every person in Israel. They knew that Iraq had SCUD missiles and they wanted to protect their citizens. Imagine the effect of government-issued gas masks… now imagine the effect on a Holocaust survivor. When the second Gulf War happened, same thing… each family was given enough gas masks for every member. For children too young to wear them (babies), they were given a little tent to put the child in. (I CANNOT IMAGINE.) They have them on a shelf in a closet now. But back to the SCUD missiles… at that time Israel had no defense system so, for the first time, American soldiers were on Israeli soil to shoot the Patriot missiles and intercept the SCUD’s. They did as militaries do and set up parameters for their encampments. In Ephraim’s words: “It was January, it was cold. Everyone needs chicken soup and comfort foods and the Jewish mothers were worried about those poor American soldiers, so they just went right around the blockades into the camps, taking them soup and home cooked meals. The American military wasn’t quite certain what to do with Jewish mothers who ignore barriers. We just like to take care of people here! When the soldiers were here, they came to Yad Vashem. Fatigues, boots, came to see the memorials here. When they came, Israeli children flocked around them, hugging them and singing. I’m not sure if American soldiers have ever been thanked the way those kids did that day.” Did I cry? YES, I did. Our country has its issues, certainly we do. But we also have so many who are so willing to give so much.
The Valley of the Communities... I don't know what to say, exactly. Let me start with this...
This is what it looks like from above. THEN you descend into the memorial and it becomes this...
The idea behind this memorial is that it remembers 17000 European communities whose Jewish populations were destroyed. I can't even express what it was that drew me in to this memorial, but I felt so connected to it. I might not ever get to Poland or Germany or Austria or Hungary. And truthfully, part of the reason I would want to go those places anyway is simply to stand in Lodz, Warsaw, Vilna, Bialystok... to pay homage to those I have read about whose everyday lives were stolen from them in those places. As I walked through this memorial, various towns jumped out at me... the town of Leonard Chill, who talked to my sophomore classes all of those years ago, the town of Gerda Klein, the ghetto where Petr and Eva Ginz lost their innocence... I felt, for just a few moments, that I was strolling through Europe, remembering the lives that were taken and those that were spared.
While there, we were so privileged to meet Ms. Hannah Pick, Anne Frank's best friend. What a precious, precious lady. She met Anne when they were tiny little girls at the grocery school. When it came time for kindergarten, she was terrified as a little refugee girl who knew no one to go to school. Then she saw, from the back, that little girl from the grocery and they became best friends. She said Anne always had a notebook and whenever anyone asked what she was writing, she would say, "None of your business!" :) Anne's special talent was that she could pop her shoulder out of place and back in and she took great pleasure in doing that to entertain her class. Her mother used to say about Anne, "God knows everything; but Anne knows it better." (She giggled as she said this, clapping her hands and saying, "I'm so glad I remembered to tell you that!")
Hannah told the story of their friendship all the way up until the point she went to Anne's house only to find out that the family had gone to Switzerland to live with family. That same day, Hannah's boyfriend was taken in a transport to Mauthausen. She lost her best friend and her boyfriend on the same day. Hannah's life took some crazy turns, as her mother got pregnant twice in the 1940's and the last pregnancy allowed her family to gain some time because pregnant women stayed behind until the babies were born. Her mother had the baby, but he was born dead, then her mother died shortly thereafter. Eventually Hannah, her sister, and her father were sent to Bergen-Belsen. Because her father had contacts high up, he was able to get them on an early list, List 2. Lists 1 and 2 went to Bergen-Belsen. Lists 3-40 went to Auschwitz and Sobibor.
In the camp, toward the end of the war, other transports came in and were divided from them by a high fence. They could hear the other ladies speaking Polish and German, which they didn't know. One day, they heard someone talking who was from Holland, so she yelled over to her. It was the lady who had been hiding with Anne's family (although Hannah just knew her as a neighbor lady at the time). The lady asked if she wanted to talk to Anne, which shocked Hannah because she thought Anne was in Switzerland. Hannah had three meetings at the wall with Anne, moments where they were able to talk briefly (not see each other) and share some moments. Hannah eventually found out that Anne died in the camp.
Hannah was liberated from a train and her description was quite hilarious. Someone asked about libertarian and she said, "I can't tell you anything about it because I slept through it (laughter). Someone said the Germans went by with white flags, but I didn't see that either. I woke to the Russians taking us down." The other HILARIOUS part of her story is that they stopped at one town but she didn't get in quickly enough, so all of the houses were gone. The next town, her group of 10 were told they could only take houses with white flags flying because that meant the occupants had fled. They got a big nice house, the mayor's house. Hannah: "And the mayor, he was a biiiiiiiiiiiig Nazi. How do I know? He had light green wallpaper with dark green swastikas. I think that was a little more than enough."
Mr. Frank is actually who came for her and her sister after the war and who helped get them settled in Israel. The Red Cross would post the names of those who survived at the Central Train Station in Amsterdam (yes, this one)
and he found their names and came to find them. He also sent her the first copy of Anne's diary. For years, whenever journalists came to talk to Mr. Frank, he sent them to Hannah. Hannah's husband called Anne his "second wife. " :)
I didn't know that I would have the chance to meet Anne Frank's best friend, to hear her story. To become, in fact a keeper of her story. However, it's not accidental that I added the Amsterdam layover to my trip. It's yet another Providential piece of this experience. To hear Hannah talk about the little girl whose rooms I saw, whose pages I read was just surreal.
As soon as I can figure out why my videos won't post on FB, the blog, OR YouTube, I'll get the full video of her presentation posted.
0 comments:
Post a Comment