By Debbie Carlson and Tammy Grubb, Special to JTNews
Editor’s note: Earlier this summer, the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center and the Seattle-based Museum Without Walls took an entourage of 21 people —most of them teachers — from around Washington State to spend 12 days in Hungary and the Czech Republic to visit important sites related to the Holocaust and to meet people who had survived it. Two of the teachers wrote about the impact of their experiences to share with JTNews readers.
Travel, inspiration, and education. What teacher does not seek any opportunity to experience these for personal enrichment? For this teacher, they all came together when offered the chance to travel to Budapest and Prague on a Holocaust study trip. It was a real-life answer to a five-year goal. A curiosity and passion for knowledge about all things Holocaust-related, and a desire to plant seeds of compassion, tolerance, and service in the hearts of my 8th grade students fueled my fire to go on this trip.
As our group walked the streets of what had been the Budapest Ghetto and I touched the remains of the ghetto wall, I knew I was in some sort of sacred sanctuary. As a non-Jew, I struggled with feelings of not belonging — I had not struggled and suffered. Somehow I was not worthy. I had to rely on my desire to know and understand so I could pass on to my own students a true picture of just how wrong it is to judge, punish, and murder people simply for their ethnicity and ancestry. We are all outsiders somewhere. I must teach them that we all belong everywhere. Every human being has value and worthiness.
The Budapest tour was rich with Hungarian history and culture, magnificent architecture and loveliness, and the largest synagogue in Europe, but one small memorial on the banks of the Danube River will be forever imprinted in my mind: A grouping of bronzed shoes of all sizes and styles. These are the remains of the innocent, brutally shot straight into the Danube because they were deemed not worthy to live.
If the Budapest Ghetto was a sanctuary, this was the altar. I had read historical accounts of the evil Arrow Cross and how the blood of the Jews made the waters of the Danube “run red,” but seeing this Shoe Memorial sucked the air right from my lungs. There are no adequate words.
If my experience in Budapest included a sense that I was in a sanctuary, my experience in the Czech Republic was one of visiting holy ground. I knew Terezìn was unique in the Nazi system of concentration camps. As I was led on a tour of the prison and walked the streets of the village as it is today with two survivors from the camp, Frieda and Eva, we stood in a tiny, only recently discovered Jewish Prayer Hall within the ghetto, I had a sense that I should speak only in whispers.
I was standing in what used to be a Nazi concentration camp. My mind did not focus on the horrible, unjust treatment of its former inhabitants; instead, all I could think about were the lives. The place had been full of children, men, women, and young adults, most of whom never got the chance to live out their dreams and goals. How will I truly honor these people? Here were Frieda and Eva standing arm in arm smiling, laughing, and pointing out the window of the space they shared as prisoners. They had been 14 years old, forced to work, starved, abused, humiliated, and now they live on and share themselves with people like me who will probably never really understand all that they endured. What did I do to deserve this privilege? How will I pass it on?
One experience in the Czech Republic that caught me off guard was our visit to the village of Lidice, just a few kilometers from Prague. There was never a Jew in town. It was Catholic. But, just as more than 6,000,000 Jews were brutally murdered during World War II, so were the people of Lidice. They were made scapegoats for the death of Hitler’s number one man in Czechoslovakia. Lidice had been suspected of being against the Nazi occupation and for possibly harboring local resistance partisans.
For this, all of the men of the village were executed, the women and some children sent to concentration and death camps, and the “Aryan-looking” children, suitable for “Germanization,” placed with Nazi SS families while the village itself was bombed, burned, and leveled to the ground. All that remains are a few excavated foundations as part of a memorial. A few women survived and returned to the new village of Lidice. We often read about concentration and death camp horrors, but it is not often we learn about attempts to annihilate entire villages. It is not that Hitler’s list of atrocities needs another example, but my Lidice experience gave me new insight into the need for respect of humanity.
Debbie Carlson teaches the 8th grade at Meridian Middle School in Kent.
This summer, a dozen other teachers and I had the privilege of taking a 12-day trip to Budapest and Prague through a Holocaust study program for educators developed by the Washington State Holocaust Education and Resource Center. In both cities, we spent time with scholars, survivors, and some local guides who generously gave of their time and expertise, helping us to gain a greater depth and breadth of knowledge, along with a greater perspective on the entirety of the Holocaust.
In Budapest we met Laszlo Csosz, a Hungarian Holocaust scholar who guided us on a walking tour of the Jewish Old Town. His passion and compassion for the history was compelling. We also met with Eva, a survivor of Bergen-Belsen, and listened as she tearfully shared her unique story and told of the challenges she faced in getting that story to a wider Hungarian audience.
In Prague, we saw the Pinkas Synagogue to view the walls covered with names of villages and families, all lost. Frieda Soury, a survivor of Terezìn, traveled with us, telling her story and pointing out details and places from her childhood.
Much of what is well-documented and available for Holocaust study is from Western Europe and Poland, the history not buried under what was first Nazi and then Communist control. In Budapest and Prague, it was harder to find — hidden, shadowy, and in some ways forgotten until 1989 and the fall of the Soviet Union. It is starting to reemerge, be rediscovered, and relearned.
Without a doubt, experiences such as this have helped me—and other teachers— become more informed about the history and impact of the Holocaust as it continues to play out, more than half a century later, across Europe and even around the world.
Study trips and other first-hand experiences and opportunities like this make teachers better; a highly trained, well-informed, and compassionate educator is the single-most important element to a quality education. I think this is especially true of Holocaust education and there is no doubt that WSHERC programs have helped me become a better teacher. Since 2005, center study trips have provided me the opportunity to travel to Holocaust sites in Poland, Berlin, and the most recent visit to Budapest and Prague. Each of these trips has afforded me the chance to see places and speak with people I could never access on my own. These sorts of “primary source” experiences have been invaluable in my classroom, helping my students and I understand the complex story that is the Holocaust.
Tammy Grubb teaches in the Eastmont School District in East Wenatchee.