Look Up!

Yesterday, a Holocaust survivor came to speak to the students in our school.  Murray Goldfinger was thirteen when his town on the border of Poland and Slovakia was invaded.  He left the safety of his bucolic farm childhood and went with his siblings and parents to a ghetto.   By the end of the war, he was the sole survivor in his family.  Upon being liberated from Buchenwald, he was taken to Switzerland for recuperation and education before moving to the United States around 1947.    For the past fifty-five years, he has been speaking about his experience to help educate the public about the dangers of torture and hatred.  However, Mr. Goldfinger exuded joy and marvel in his speech, and the students listened with rapt attention.

Afterwards, a question came from the audience:  how do you keep your positive attitude?  

Mr. Goldfinger admitted that he did have nightmares and that he still struggles whenever passing smokestacks and factory buildings.  But he told a story that I know will help me in my upcoming journey, and maybe even throughout my life.

In Switzerland, he said, the teachers for the group of refugee children were more psychiatrists than teachers.  Many of the orphans needed to learn how to use forks and spoons!  The emotional baggage that they carried was so burdensome and there were so many questions about the future.  

One day, the refugees went for a hike in the beautiful Swiss mountains.  At the top of a precipice, a mentor teacher asked the children to look down.  Down, down, down, they saw stones and trees and a deep deep fall.  The teacher asked, "How do you feel when you look down?"  and the answers ranged from dizzy to nauseous, from scared to overwhelmed.

Then, the students were guided to look up to the sky.  (It happened to be a beautiful day, Mr. Goldfinger remembered.)  "How do you feel, now?"   The children felt fine when they looked up.

The orphaned refugees were advised not to forget what had happened, but to be careful when looking down, when looking back at the horrific past.    Instead, they were encouraged to look up to the sky, to their future, to the families they would create and the new homes they would live in when they moved on.

Look up.

I am going to carry Mr. Goldfinger's message with me when I begin my journey next week.