Dachau

On Tuesday, I took 33, 8th graders to Dachau. For months, I had wondered what it would feel like to stand in a place of such horrific history. I wondered if I could handle the emotions that I knew would push through my brain and enter my heart. I have taught the Holocaust to 9 years worth of students. Yet, the last two years, I have felt more sensitive to the teaching of History. I couldn't help but take personally any student that didn’t understand its significance, or its gravity. Luckily, my history curriculum this year has been the Renaissance, which made the contemplation of history less raw. As if I didn’t have to think about modern people senselessly killing and manipulating their citizens. That is not to say that there were no injustices in the 15th century, for certainly there were. But my sensitivity is certainly less when I get to focus on DaVinci, Michelangelo and Shakespeare.

I am now teaching in Europe and instead of staring at 15 and 16 year olds, I was now looking at children who were closer to 13. I couldn’t help but think about history and how it rumbles on, whether you are ready for it to or not.

The last two weeks, I would walk into my classroom and would look at my students’ faces, as I tried to get them to think about genocide. Every day feeling more and more discouraged. Discouraged at the way they were so quick to blame the Germans, blame Hitler, blame the insanity that happened on insanity itself. I felt myself wanting to jump up and down. To shout, “Don’t you see? Don’t you see that this, this cruelty all lies within all of us? That it could happen and not only, could it happen, but that it IS happening right now, and we are doing nothing to stop it.”

I felt sick, literally sick. Sick at myself. Sick about them. What am I doing? I am sipping wine and drinking vodka tonics in St. Tropez, lecturing my students about the fact that indifference is worse than hatred. How can I take these students to Dachau when they are not prepared. They don’t understand. What if they get to Dachau and it is just land to them?

So there I was, standing in front of my students. My life path chosen, I had decided 14 years ago, that I would be a teacher. That I would try to impact students. Attempt, like Mary Martin, to open their minds, make them thinkers. Yet, here I was standing in front of them and they were silent. Not silent in thought, no, instead they looked bored and I had failed.



Friday came, it was my last class day, before the trip, and I walked into my room, and told them to sit down. It was the final day of battle and I had to win. As I looked at them, I thought, ‘Yes, today, you will be silent. Today, I am going to try to reach deep into your heart and make you see, how complicated life really is. I don’t want to hear your voices. For, you need to hear their voices. The voices of the dead. The people who were killed, because sometimes people kill and you need to try to understand.”

I took a deep breath and I opened up Jonathan Safran Foer’s book Everything’s Illuminated and I started to read. I didn’t want to cry. Crying in front of 10th graders, is something a teacher can do. It sometimes even adds credibility and heart that they don’t always think about. It can make them realize that you really do care about the things that you are teaching them. But, crying in front of 8th graders is suicide. They don’t understand, I don’t know them well enough to comment on why you shouldn’t cry, but I knew I shouldn’t. I would lose them again and this was a battle I needed to win.

Keep breathing, I instructed my brain, as my voice shook at Foer’s words, as they drifted into the air and cut to the heart of how genocide can happen.

Silence. Complete and utter silence, as 16 pairs of eyes watched me as my voice cracked but remained composed. Tears, tears came down some of their faces, for others their eyes started to glisten.

“What would you do?" I asked, closing the book, not pausing for an answer. "What would you possibly do? It is impossible to say. Impossible to understand. I don’t want an answer, because you can’t possibly know. None of us have any idea. But what I hope, more than anything else, is that you walk out of this room and you realize that life, history is extremely complex and that it is not okay to just say the Holocaust was horrific, even though it was. It was people like you and I that did this. Not monsters, but humans. It does no good to make humans into monsters in our heads when we are trying to understand the Holocaust. And everyday you wake up you get to decide what kind of person you want to be. Sometimes you will make mistakes, but it is you alone who decides how you treat people and what you do. And sometimes those choices are hard and will mean you would have to risk everything to do the right thing.”

I had chills. Listening to our tour guide as we walked through the camp. My students were quiet, they were attentive, they asked questions. Amazingly thoughtful questions.

Yet, they weren’t ready. They were too young and I felt guilty, for I had brought them here.

I wasn’t ready...

Perhaps no one is old enough to stand in a place of systematic murder.

(Still trying to fight through writer's block, urgh)