I know I haven’t finished blogging about Germany. I know I haven’t blogged about Croatia. There are still several topics I need to write about, such as our tour of Berlin and the Berlin Wall, and ice cream in Croatia.
That will have to wait a little longer. (I know I’m lazy and could have done it last week while I enjoyed my one week of summer vacation. I did upload my pictures to our group Shutterfly account, but that was as far as I got.)
I do need to blog about what I’m doing now though. I’m in Richmond (sitting in an apartment on the University of Richmond campus) because I’m taking a week long grad class on the Holocaust and Genocide through the University of Richmond and the Virginia Holocaust Museum. (Yes, VA has a Holocaust Museum. I learned about this sometime last year I think? It isn’t far from D.C., they realize that, but their approach is more hands on and story specific. And it’s actually the 4th or 5th larges Holocaust museum in the country.)
The museum is really based on the story of Jay Ipson’s family. The Ipson family lived through the Holocaust. Thirteen, including Jay, survived. He’s 75 now and still going strong. He put a lot of work into the museum (as did many others) and wanted something really hands on, something to showcase what life was like, without too much script around for people to read and they’ve accomplished that here. Many of the exhibits are personal things. The Kristallnacht portion for example shows the broken windows in the Woolworth’s in Berlin. Jay’s father saw this destruction. (And that Woolworth’s was attacked erroneously-it had a Jewish manager, but not a Jewish owner.)
Our class began yesterday with a discussion of what genocide is, and examples of past genocide. We discussed Armenia. The Rape of Nanjing. (Although many scholars have concluded that Nanjing was not genocide, but atrocoties of war-it was missing several components that make up genocide.)
We also discussed the Herero genocide. Who? The Herero? Never heard of them. Did I skip class that day? (That was something like my thought process.) The Herero genocide occurred in the early 1900′s in what is now Namibia. People expanded there for farming space, ran the Herero off their land, and decided to annihilate them. They posioned their wells, pushed them into the desert where they died, or were turned into slaves and lived in a concentration camp. There was even a death camp (the first one) on Shark Island. Who committed this genocide against the Herero? The Germans. I had no idea. And the Herero genocide influenced several key Nazi party members. Hermann Göring’s father was a key offical during this time, and Göring idolized his father. (He must have made daddy proud?) Eugen Fisher, who would become the director of the Kaiser Wilhelm Institute for Anthropology, Human Heredity, and Eugenics, conducted “research” on Herero people in the concentration camps, concluding that they were inferior to the Germans. The Kaiser Wilhelm Institute trained doctors for the Third Reich, including Mengele. Why have I never heard of this? I’m not sure. It seems pretty important to me.
We learned about that yesterday, during our first session. This morning we talked about a few technical things needed when writing lesson plans and how they should be done (rationale statements and guiding questions.) Then we went on a tour of the museum with a docent named Alex Keisch. Alex is a Holocaust survivor, although he has no personal stories to share. He (and his twin brother ) were born at Auschwitz on April 21, 1945, nine days before the war ended, and after the Germans had already vacated the camp. Alex’s parents were partisans and lived in the woods. His father saved around 50 Jews during the war. The story of Alex’s father is similar to that of the Bielski brothers, who are well known. The movie Defiance was based on their actions during the war. One day Alex’s father and a few others were caught. They were marched in a line, hands tied behind their back, on a path through the woods. A funeral procession passed going in the other direction. The mourners and prisoners looked similar-heads down, hands behind their back. Alex’s father waited, turned around, and became the last mourner in the funeral line and escaped capture.
His father did not trust the Soviets though, so the family went to West Berlin and were in a Red Cross camp. Alex’s mother unfortunately got sick and died due to lack of medical care in 1948. She was about 22. He did not find out where her grave was until 2004, and he was finally able to visit it and place a stone on his mother’s grave. (I’m sure you know, but Jews place a rock on a headstone to show that someone who cared about the person buried there came to visit.)
After the war, a Jewish businessman in Hartford, Connecticut, signed a piece of paper stating that he was hiring Alex’s father to work for him. They never even met this person, but they did need a signature saying that Alex’s father would have employment, which is how they wound up in the United States.
Alex doesn’t have an accent, and if you saw him on the street you would never know he was a Holocaust survivor. He’s very funny and knows a lot of information, and was an excellent tour guide. He speaks very matter of factly about his family’s experience and is willing to share those experiences. We all would have liked more time with him.
This afternoon we talked about Judaism, who is a Jew, and the centuries of persecution they have faced, as well as how they were (are?) viewed/portrayed by people and the Church. Tomorrow we’re discussing WWI and the Rise of Hitler and non-Jewish victims of the Holocaust among other things. Wednesday evening we have a dinner with Holocaust survivors, followed by a question and answer period.
My problem is now coming up with 5 lesson plans (due next Friday!) that make up the final requirement for this class and will give me my 3 graduate credit hours. Another thing floating around in the back of my mind (since I’ve got to work on my Master’s in History) is perhaps finding an avenue to pursue should I choose to write a thesis. I’m thinking the Herero genocide (and how it influenced the Holocaust maybe?) might be something to look into.
