Day 5: Czech Republic/Poland

On this day (because I am very behind), we visited the Jewish Ghetto. Our visit included many ornate and detailed synagogues. We learned that ornate synagogues are relatively new (150 years or newer).  

Also on journey were cemeteries, especially the Old Jewish Cemetery. Prior to entering the cemetery, visitors walk through a memorial in which every known Jewish victim is listed by village, family name, birthdate, and (if known) death date. If restrictions are followed, it is to be quiet inside so that the song can be heard. The audio is a recording of all the names on the walls, men's names spoken by men and women's by women. I wish it had been more quiet so that it felt more like a memorial than a tour. 

From there, the 12-layered cemetery. Because the earth is sinking and the cemetery space is small, it is quite a sight.  Trees and roots have moved the gravestones into jumbled and precarious angles of arrangement. 

We had a half day, lunch, and then head to Prague. Our ride was seven hours. It was an early night.

Czech lunch: spicy beef goulash and bread dumplings 

Day 4: Czech Republic

Longest. Day. Ever. Almost 12 miles of walking and record high temperature of 104 degrees!!  We had a jam-packed day. 

In the morning, we took a walking tour of Prague. Our tour guide, Luba, was an amazing treasure. I learned so much that I cannot possibly record it all, but here I will capture the peaks. 

Charles Bridge: commissioned by King Charles after prior kings had wooden bridges built. Myth says that King Charles requested all Bohemia farmers to bring him eggs to use in building the bridge. Why?  The calcium in the eggs. At this point, the bridge is ancient (I need to check with someone else to see when it was built) and there is no scientific evidence that this is true. There also stand 31 statues, all of which are representative of religious, mythical, or famous people of Prague.  From there, we walked down around the canal and under beautiful overpasses. Also saw these... Charming statues. Worth a good laugh. 

Next, we drove to the top of Prague and got out to explore Prague Castle. The cathedral was ordered by King Charles to be built for his French bride. His builder came from France and spent the remainder of his life building. The building took six centuries to complete!  Lots of neat stories about the stained glass windows inside. We were witness to the changing of the guards, as well. This was a handsome site to see ;-) It was a great morning, but we did a lot of listening and waiting, so there's not much more interesting to report on. 

Next we drove out to the Bohemian uplands to Terezin Ghetto. Terezin (Theresienstadt) was a unique camp of the Holocaust. Terezin served as a holding pen until deportation. Terezin was originally an early Jewish settlement in the 16th century.  After they were forced to resettle, the fort was used and taken over. Hitler established a reputation for Terezin: a self-contained center of Jewish culture in which families lived together, children went to school, food was aplenty, and life was good. This was an obvious deception. The original fort was established for a 7k person community. At its peak in WWII, 58k prisoners lived. 

In 1944, the International Red Cross set up a visit of the camp. The entire place was made over to look well and good. After a few hours' visit and dinner at the hotel, they deemed the camp in good order and health under good management. Basically. In reality, typhus was rampant and so many died and were buried in the surrounding fields, that the Nazis dug up or dumped piles of bodies into the crematoria and dumped ashes in the river. Today, people SWIM there.  

There were amazingly talented prisoners everywhere, but Terezin allowed for those creative to pursue their talents (for Nazi purposes).  However, the art, literature, music, and design movements and remnants remain. Children, too, were encouraged to take up art and their haunting work remains. 

For me, this was the most useful experience. While it's true that I could research at home, there's a feeling a person has standing in a converted barracks reading poetry and waking through an art gallery and memorial where many before me stood.  Students need a more personal connection. I envision myself using photos from this trip as a supplement to specific memoir excerpts or poems or art specific to each camp. There are some truly amazing stories of cultural dedication and courage.  Most of all, artwork is timeless. It could be put aside modern children's artwork and analyzed for mood, tone, subject, story. Lots of activities possible for today's experience!

Terezin is a town today and there is such an eerie and desolate feeling walking through it. I don't know how anyone could live in the same walls as the 200,000 prisoners who struggled to survive between 1940-1945. Even after liberation, freed Jews and their liberators (Russia) died of typhus, basically written a death notice by isolating the sick.  There's little green grass, children's toys, stores, or people around. I guess offering low-income housing in a former ghetto and one of the Nazis' most deceptive secrets isn't really enough!!  

The Jewish Cemetery and memorials were up next. In front of a granite menorah we had a small service consisting of the Jewish Kaddash prayer, Psalm 23, and a Terezin child's poetry. It was moving and there were tears. 

Outside the walls there is the Small Fortress, a jail for political prisoners. There are some interesting history and sites, but I was so hot and hangry by 4:30 that I kind of shut down. 

(More to come. Very tired. Will pick up tomorrow and repost.)

 But here are two teasers:

And now... Poland!

Day 3: Berlin and Travel

Friday. Break day. Drive day. We left Berlin at 9 and made a stop at Gruenwald Station in the Berlin suburbs.

Gruenwald Station was the major deportation station of WWII. The rail line there is no longer functioning, but if you stumble upon it, there are two memorials. The rail line took ownership of their role in the Holocaust and created a memorial. On either side of the tracks are platforms made of iron. Each platform represents a transport that left. Each platform has the date of transport, number of Jews, departure, and destination. It's a very simple but very powerful memorial to walk along. The last train out of Gruenwald Station carried just 18 Jews. Some transport numbers were as high as 2000 at the height of the war (and also, picking up right after Wansee Convention).  

From there, we spent six hours on the bus headed towards Prague. 

Upon arrival, we had a few free hours until dinner at 7. I opted to take a quick nap and convert money.

Day 2: Berlin

Today is a travel day, Berlin to Prague by bus.

Yesterday we had a two-part trip. In the morning, we went to Wansee. Our tour guide, Christophe, is a published historian and he gave a presentation. His delivery and focus towards us (educators) perfectly captured our attention (for close to three hours).

Some facts about the Wansee "Convention."

-Hitler did not attend. He was too busy with movies and races.

-Eichmann called on fourteen of Hitler's ministries.

-The "convention" lasted only 90 minutes and was followed by breakfast,

thus illustrating the strategic and organizational nature.

-The purpose was to organize a more "effective" solution to the "problem" of European Jews. 

-Really, the meeting resulted in the formation of a train timetable for deportation and murder. 

-there was actually an expert in shooting another in use of murderous gas (Schongarth).  Seriously?! 

-After the war, a few of the 15 had die naturally or committed suicide. A few were executed after the Nuremberg Trials. Otto Hofmann and Wilhelm Stuckart were "sentenced" in American courts.  Otto Hoffmann to 25, but served six years.  Stuckart served three.  Seems like we Americans look bad. The biggest problem was that really, none of those attendants at the conference had killed anyone directly.  Scary that they organized the Final Solution and didn't have to take really any blame at all. Plus, it seems that America hired Nazi minds for their education and to work for the US. This information comes from my fellow program people, so I may be relating false information. I am inclined, however, to believe it. America can be so selfish. 

-Germans were protected from knowing about the extermination camps. If you recall, none were in Germany. Poland had the most.

The museum is laid out with a variety of sources, including interactive ones. Christophe finished with a photo source lesson, which I plan to use in my own class.  It was also interesting to hear a German speak about German history. It's been a long journey of admitting, ignoring, and teaching younger generations about the Holocaust. 

Following this, we drive to Sachsenhausen. Sachsenhausen was a concentration camp (work) outside of Berlin. I opted to work my way around independently with the recorded tour. Yesterday was a HOT day. To stand in the barracks and walk around the camp in the heat (just walking) made history come alive. I had a similar realization while in Savannah ten years ago as I visited a plantation and the reality of slave labor really settled on me. 

While many concentration and extermination camps are quiet and serene, Sachsenhausen is a serious museum. Barracks and infirmary buildings have been restored, supplemented by personal stories and historical source documents. A person could spend days there reading and experiencing it all. I couldn't. It's so weird to walk in a jail and see plagues and bios of cell mates... One of whose poetry I use in class. 

My first Holocaust experience was a learning experience. I think it served me well to read and then find some reflection walking alone. I'm not quite ready to be in solitude and solace at a relatively unmarked camp. I suspect that by the time we get to Auschwitz-Birkenau, I may be able to really release. 

We had about an hour between returning to our hotel and dinner, so we did a little shopping. Following our dinner (with more beer), I orchestrated a trip to a nearby beer garden.

Now we are on our way and about to put a movie on, "In Darkness." 

Day 1: Berlin

Our flight landed in Berlin as the blue sky welcomed us and the breeze ruffled our flight bed head. While some of our group managed to snag a few hours of sleep on the plane, others of us squirmed and adjusted (then re-adjusted... Repeat) through less-than-fitful "shut eye."

Maud, our very own Holocaust survivor tour guide, and our two city guides met us and we loaded into our bus at 8:30 am. 

Berlin is bike-friendly (bike riders do not follow suit), litter free (other than cigarette butts), and in a constant state of construction. Old stands in stark contrast and reminder against the new and colorful architecture. 

By bus, we passed through Parliament Quarter, the Reichstag (surreal to match up the historical pictures of Nazi gatherings to the present building), and between the former East and West Berlin. People gathered in the plazas of Humboldt University today, the spot of the famed book burnings.  The city center is largely undeveloped, as it was a former no-man's-land during Communism time. Even though it's been almost 25 years since the wall came down, the efforts to build up the city center are slow and kind of depressing. City center looks more like my version of warehouse lots on the outskirts of our cities. 

Getting out in the old Jewish Quarter, we visited the Neue Synangoge (1859), which had been spared during Kristallnacht courtesy of a Polizia officer who sent looters away with shame. Walking about, it's impossible to ignore the graffiti and art on newer building. Sven (tour guide) tells us that they just ignore it rather than repainting. This was beautifully obvious in an alley outside the Otto Weidt Museum. Art of many styles, mediums, strokes, and languages cover every wall, layering on top of layering. This is not unlike the capital of Berlin that has its own layers and layers of history and architecture. 

Otto Weidt was a workshop owner who hired blind and deaf Jewish workers to make brooms and other goods. He used his factory to aid his Jewish workers and it was not unheard of for him to show up at the jails to demand his workers back. The museum had tons of great free recourses about his workers and own life.  Bringing great stuff home for classroom use. (And for you, Adam!)

From there we drove over to the Topography of Terror, an open-air and modern museum that covers the Nazi dictatorship regime and some of the Communism times, as the Wall is one border of the property. The museum is laid out chronologically, with a variety of nonfiction sources (see that?? RST language) to illustrate.  Very well-done. Outside, visitors can walk along remnants of the Berlin Wall and walk through the preserved basement walls of three Nazi institutions that had their headquarters in the area. The Prinz-Albrecht-Strase was a road of terror during the Nazi regime. The basements remain after demolition as a reminder of how prisoners were tortured and interrogated. 

After our arrival at our hotel, we had a late lunch followed by an option of nap or more walking. I tried to do both, but due to sheer exhaustion, forgot to set "go" on my nap timer. Whoops. 

More tomorrow: Wansee Villa and a concentration camp outside of Berlin that I can neither spell nor remember.  (Turns out it is Sachsenhausen.)

Tomorrow....

Flight from EWR-Berlin!

The Night Before...

Here we are... one night before departure to Europe, a trip that will--no doubt--change my perspective on life and how I approach and teach the Holocaust unit at school.

So... there are two versions of me going on this trip.

The first  is the girl whose idea of a great vacation includes eating hotdogs straight off a stick from a campfire roast, living in a bathing suit for days on end collecting all remnants of fishing and boat adventures, and spending as little money as possible while sleeping on the ground in a tent.  I come from an amazingly crazy, loving, and hard-core family who have had an incredible life together.  More memories have been made on our yearly camping trips than any other hotel vacation ever (although who can forget the bidet incident in Montreal?).  We Drosdicks are no-frills kind of people.  If we have a place to sleep, some good food to eat, water, and enough space to be together on one camping site, we are pretty damn near perfectly content.  Although part of it probably stems from the fact that a vacation for a family of six is expensive, our camping vacations happened mostly in part because both my mom and dad grew up in nature and adventure-loving families (Mom's vacations were often long road trips).  Dad had probably slept on the same pine, sandy patch 30 years prior as his four little kids did.  (This has gone away on a tangent, but I'm going to leave it because my family is so darn awesome.)  So, the idea of spending over three grand on a vacation that includes dinner cruises, 4-star hotels, and restaurant meals is utterly new to me.

So there's that girl.  The girl who doesn't spend money on vacations and is perfectly happy to live out of a cooler and back pack.

And then, there's the teacher woman in me.  I am the oldest of four kids, in case you weren't aware, and have always loved playing that role of the eldest.  I was sitting those kids around with books and animals long before I knew that I wanted to be a teacher.  Never mind that I wouldn't realize I was born to be a teacher until high school.  During my student teaching at James Madison University, I spent eight weeks at a rural Virginia school teaching 8th grade.  When I was offered a position to teach there full-time the following fall after graduation, I didn't exactly jump at the offer.  Most of my friends would be graduated by that time and on their way to new locales and adventures.  I couldn't get a job in New Jersey, though, so I accepted the offer.  I had grown up in New Jersey and was, really, very clueless about life in rural Virginia.  So, when I issued an anticipation guide (a list of statements with which students agree or disagree prior to a unit and discuss their opinions) that challenged students to face their opinions of hate, racism, and forgiveness prior to my Anne Frank unit, I was horrified to see, face-to-in-my-face, the bigotry of some young minds in my classroom.  I had one class, mid-day, that is seared in my mind as the pivotal moment of my teaching career just a few months into my career.  It was the kind of class discussion that seeped over long into the next period's class, one that couldn't just be interrupted with a dismissive, "Off you go to class with those tears in your eyes and that hurt on your sleeve." That day, I was dealing with racism, hatred, and judgment.  I realized, and was told, that a teacher can change a life and somehow get in the middle of a serious life and change it.  At the end of the year, a student named Faun told me the biggest thing she had learned all year was "not to hate other people."  Later on, a student asked her hated father to be a part of her life a little bit more... a result of our study of hate in the Anne Frank unit.  Aside from the fact that I realized a teacher holds an incredible responsibility to humanity and our kids, I realized maybe I was approaching the Holocaust unit the wrong way.  Maybe, a person needs to be immersed in the beauty of humankind instead of the ugliness.  Maybe, when life kinda sucks for you, it's important to look at a far worse persecution and see how other people lightened loads of burden.

I don't know why that never occurred to me before.

After all, I had spent months living amongst those with lives most of us never want.  Spending time amongst and getting to know the homeless, vagrant, and poverty-ridden was what I had spent summers attending to.  While other high school students were going down the shore or working summer jobs, I was learning about the importance of not judging others based on stereotypes and labels.  Those mission trips with Touch the World taught me the importance of finding the sparks of humanity in others, and the importance of seeing the positive in spite of the glaring negatives.

Oh boy, do I write too much.  It feels so good to do it though, so I'm scratching that itch. :)

And so, back to the current teacher woman in me.  After a year in that rural Virginia school, I was hired in Mahwah for an 8th grade Language Arts position.  And... Anne Frank was part of the curriculum.  The angle that I've chosen to take since my experience in life and Augusta County was to focus on the beauty of day-to-day choices to do the right thing.  Now, our units focus on the heroes and heroines, the survivors and their courage...hope, the strength and power of positivity and helping others in any way that a person can. I go to this trip tomorrow with the goal of finding further proof that...

a- Maybe (some) historical lessons are more about what's not around anymore rather than what's right in front of us.
b-Good, strong people made what we see as tough decisions (but they see as no-choice decisions) during the Holocaust.
c- Heroes and heroines walk among us.  In fact, a dear friend (and best damn special educator) sent me an article about a woman who did more work that Schindler and just died in Warsaw.  I could have walked past her while I am there next week and would never have even known!

Truthfully, this isn't the ideal vacation.  Tourism websites don't say, "Must do.  Visit Auschwitz.  Great stop."  But, documenting this trip in photos and on this blog will magnify the learning experience that I bring to the classroom.  Sure, I'll be traveling and be immersed in some heavy stuff, but at the end of the day, I hope to sit down with new and old friends to debrief our day and thoughts.  Students always ask me if I've ever visited any of these places.  Now, I will be able to walk where Otto Frank walked as his girls were sent to Bergen-Belsen.  I will climb the very stairs that the Franks, VanPels, and Fritz Pfeffer treaded to hiding.  As I recommend books about the Warsaw ghetto, I will be able to retell the living proof of it. For the past two years, we have hosted a Holocaust survivor, Mr. Paul Galan.  Prior to his visit, my students complete a research project that culminates in a variety of activities that showcase the heroism and power of hope in Holocaust survivors and rescuers.  We always end up crying and I always have the surest of sure feelings that most kids are, truly, changed and impacted by the Holocaust unit.  Some of my most hesitant readers take Holocaust book suggestions and return the books, fully read, in a matter of days.  My Holocaust books ALWAYS come back.  It's like they understand the power of those texts and the importance of making them available to other kids.

(Oh yeah... and I'll be learning a lot about the cuisine options in Germany, Czech Republic, Poland, and Amsterdam while I am there, too.)

If you made it through that ramble, you are my simple hero/heroine of the day.  I'll be posting from my phone and KindleFire, so during-trip posts will not be as long.

Thanks for joining me on this journey!