The event is approaching....

All our work, our thoughts and preparations, will come to the test. And, in the imminence of the event, I have been thinking: what is it that I hope for this event?

I hope that we may teach our audience something. I hope that we will not stutter, or be left with awkward silences, or, on the other hand, raving, quarreling audience members. I hope the adults will appreciate our work, realize that we are capable of pulling such a thing off.

I hope all these things. But even if they do come to pass, I wouldn't mind. What matters most, I think, is doing something that will make a difference in the community, in the world. And, in this event, that is precisely what we are doing. We are shaping and contributing to humanity and the world.

Milton Reynolds

Milton Reynolds came to our class to teach us how to manage good conversations in our groups during our event. We were taught what to expect in these groups and then taught how to deal with. One that caught me surprise was that if an argument rises up, we could either make it like a group activity (ask people to take sides) or ask for more voices (stop the argument).

Holocaust Paintings

On Monday we studied six paintings created by Holocaust survivor Samuel Bak. I found it remarkable that he had his first art exhibition when he was only about nine years old and trapped in a Jewish ghetto. The memories of the Holocaust are very much apparent in his haunting images of expressionless, maimed faces and corroded objects. The color palette he chose--dark, dulled colors--sets a melancholy mood.

My favorite picture was "Keeper of Secrets". A huge stone pear sits under stormy skies. It has cracked, with shards piling up on the ground and the middle crumbling away to reveal a key. The keyhole, strangely, is on the pear's exterior. The paint is mostly blue, with a few flecks of yellow or brown in the ground. Although it is a rather simple composition, it holds deep feelings. I think the survivors of the Holocaust are just like the pear. Although they may have hidden locked their memories and hidden the key deep inside, the memories will haunt them and eventually break down the walls and burst out.

Art Lesson: Holocaust

So far, we've seen been learning about musical and written literature reactions to the Holocaust. None could give a clearer picture of their experience than paintings. Paintings show a combination of what a person saw and what a person felt.
We walk into the classroom where huge posters lay on separate collections of desks. They are the works of Samuel Bak, a child trapped in a polish Jewish ghetto around 1942. Here is few of what we saw:

Sounds of Silence: A string quartet is camoflauged in a mess in an open field. Each person in the quartet played a different role in the Holocaust (German soldier and Jewish prisoner). Everyone's instrument had no strings, showing that absolutely nobody had a voice in this war.

Family Tree: A tree grows from a crematorium with Jewish stars for leaves. But unlike most trees who look strong, this one looks weak. The message from this painting was that the Holocaust destroyed Jewish families. Different roles in their families had been killed off.

Greetings from Facing History & Ourselves

I've posted links to our blog on the Facing History & Ourselves page on Facebook, and whoever it is that updates their Facebook page wrote this comment back to me:

"We've been reading the posts. Very thoughtful reflections. Please tell your students that we were impressed."

I second that comment. The posts so far have been great, and there are two more student bloggers still to come.

Pixtures from our class sessions with Mark Davis of FHAO

We have now finished the book!

In truth, this was my second time reading Night--I found, though, that I noticed many details this time around that had escaped me the first time I read the book. Also, various ideas discussed in class, such as eugenics, impossible decisions, and the Holocaust's effect on faith, deepend my understanding of the work.

I found the book, overall, to be a powerful reflection on humanity and it's potential for cruelty. The tone was tired, somber, as though life was to much for Wiesel. Even the ending was somewhat pessimistic. In his life, however, I believe Wiesel has shown what can be made of such a horrific experience--how to rise above it, and use the experience to shape a better future.

We are now focused entirely on preparing for the event. Positions are being assigned, themes/content are being discussed, lessons are being taught that we, in turn will teach our guests.

Today we focused in on Jewish musicians of the Holocaust. We listened to music they had composed while being held in concentration camps, and analyzed/responded to it. I found that I greatly enjoyed the excercise--their music had a modern, creative quality to it, and the emotion of the music was almost palpable. One of the selections--Passacaglia & Fugue for String Trio-- had a desolate, somber quality, while the other, String Quartet # 2 Opus 7, was more frantic, bristling, with a hint of anger.

Soon, we will be discussing fine art as a way to respond to the Holocaust. As an artist myself, I am looking forward to this excercise. :)

We are nearing the end of the book now, and we should be finishing it tonight.
In class today, we discussed how going through such traumatic events with a person close to the individual could either strengthen or break their relationship. It all comes down to an impossible choice--would you abandon your father so you could survive or bear the burden even though it would weigh down both your chances of survival? In The Last Days, Bill Basch had to make such a decision. As an innocent young boy, he promised his friend that they would always stay together no matter what happened. But on a death march, his friend hurt his leg, and a SS officer was going to kill him. Basch and another friend stepped up to protect the hurt friend, but under threat of death, they did the unthinkable; They abandoned him. To this day, Basch is still haunted by this event. It was more than cruel to force these impossible choices on young children. And for all the people who were victims of the Holocaust, this became their normal life.
We also discussed some really powerful quotes in the book. There was a victim in the hospital who said that he had more faith in Hitler than anyone else because Hitler kept his promises to the Jews. The Jews had been let down by everyone else, even God. This is a poignant and revealing statement, and it makes me wonder why we did not do more to help them. Hitler had laid his promises out in full view of the world. Could no one have stopped him?
Something else I thought was really disturbing was the experiments doctors were doing on the Jews. They would try to see if eye color or height could be changed, and many of the people they experimented on ended up with grotesque deformities. After they were done, the Jews would be sent to gas chambers and disposed of. Some doctors tried to save the Jews, but the only way to do that was to keep performing tests on them. I find that rather ironic and extremely sickening.

Preparations for our community book event are underway!

Most recently, we have been watching the documentary movie The Last Days, which focuses in on a group of Holocaust survivors as they describe their experiences during that period. I find that the movie, with its "personal touch," better helps me understand and relate to the material. Furthermore, the people featured in the documentary seem more-or-less happy now, which I believe to be a powerful testament to the human ability to heal, even after horrific trauma.

A variety of interesting and provocative discussions have come up in class. One was the many "impossible decisions" people were forced to make during the Holocaust. These are decisions in which there is no right or wrong. Many, for instance, were forced to choose between helping the Nazis kill their fellow Jews--who were going to die anyway--, or dying alongside them. In this type of situation, what does a person do? And what does it mean, that people were forced to make such decisions in the first place?

I have also been researching eugenics personally, for a research project I am doing for this class. Eugenics, the study/practice of "improving" the human race by discouraging reproduction in "defective" humans and increasing reproduction in "better" people, relates directly to the Holocaust. Today I read in one of my sources, "Someone has to decide who the 'good people' are, and anyone who considers that he/she is qualified to make this determinition is the last person who should have this power."

Reading Night

Nothing much has been discussed about the event lately in 5th period. We've been focusing mainly on the book. So far, we've watched part of a video of Holocaust survivors, taken our first quiz on Night, and discussed it with small groups and the class.

Hearing people tell the stories instead of reading them was more accessible for me. There were scenes where the survivors showed their descendants where they had stayed and what they did there. By looking at what had become of those places, I would have never known if they were concentration camps if someone had not told me. The brick factory that one woman worked at looked bright and cheery instead of all the normal Holocaust pictures that were glum.

We discussed how survival in the Holocaust depends on chance. The motivation to survive may be to be assigned to the same group as a friend, for example. Soon after, we realized that somehow, everything relies on chance. Just like an A on a test relies on the chance of knowing the material, survival for people like Elie in the Holocaust depended on motivation. And that motivation came from chances like being put together in the same group as a friend.

The Road to NIGHT

This week, our class got its first exposure of Night and the planning of the event. We discussed what we wanted the event to be like and what we wanted our guests to get out of it. For inspiration, we were shown an example of what Facing History and Ourselves students in Tennessee did at their event. The article was proof of how students can change the community, one of our goals for this event.

Mr. Cohen gave us the basic facts: 11 million dead, Germany losing World War 1, etc. It wasn't until Mark Davis from the regional office of Facing History and Ourselves came and immersed us in the Holocaust by activities. There was propaganda all over the room. We were to discuss our "favorites" with our small groups. Whatever the piece, my small group concluded how unnatural it would be for us to publicize words or drawings degrading people because of what they were born into. Studying this material, its hard to think that this is only the beginning.