Monday, August 2, 2010

Summer Reading

I met Gerda Weissmann Klein when the Kurt and Tessye Simon Fund for Holocaust Remembrance brought her to South Bend in 2006. I am re-reading her Holocaust memoir All But My Life, the summer reading assignment for my incoming four sections of level 3 American Lit. and Composition class.

Gerda is one of six thousand Jews who lived in Bielitz before the war. Only 25,000 Jews live in the entire country today. Over nine percent of Poland was Jewish in 1939. Today, it's less than seven-tenths of one percent.

Because of the trip, I've seen now first hand what a vibrant culture was lost; her home town of Bielitz, now called Bielsko-Biala, is only a few miles from the beautiful city of Krakow where we stayed for three days. From what I can see from some pictures on the internet, Bielsko-Biala looks a lot like Krakow.

The trip will make me better able to teach and to encourage my students to learn for themselves about the Holocaust. "Please remember," said Waclaw, "These were individual people."




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