Opening Reception

We are here!  On Thanksgiving, I wrote about the prisoners of the Warsaw Ghetto finding frantic ways to share about their lives through writing and other arts.  They needed to prove "We were here!"  Well, today, I am here. I am here in Warsaw, maybe forty five minutes and nine decades away from the farm where Seymour (then Shimon) Bengels (then Bengelsdorf) was born and grew up.  I am here in Warsaw with an amazing groups of teachers, leaders, students, and human beings.  And we have all met this very evening in a reception of chats and cheer...and lots of thought.

The organizers from the USC Shoah Foundation and Discovery Education really know their stuff.  I am so impressed at how they got us settled and comfortable.  We were divided into smaller groups (dinner tables) and each group has four or five teachers, balanced between males and females, US folks and international folks.  Each group has a leader from USC Shoah and ours, Claudia Wiedemann, is delightful.  My group also consists of Jeannie (my penpal and twitter buddy), Laurie (who has traveled extensively with students, and who knows that a stripe on a water bottle means that it doesn't have bubbles...), Stephen (who is merry and from Derbyshire, UK, which is pronounced "Darbyshire", so our music teacher buddy will be happy), and Adam (who is from Krakow and who recently sent us some amazing photos of Jewish culture in interwar Krakow).  I feel comfortable with the group, which is great.  What a relief!

We didn't take a photo of all of us yet, so these photos that Adam shared last week will have to do.  I promise some real photos of me with people...eventually.

One of the photos Adam shared last week-- Yiddish theater in Krakow.

Another one of the photos he shared:  Jewish gymnastics.
All I can say is "Oy vey!"

Kaye, the mastermind of communication who has been our main contact person these months, made sure that everyone was introduced, but she did it with photos by table, which made it run much more smoothly.

This is Kaye Andrews, the organizer of this Past is Present adventure.  She's from England and  has been living in CA during this planning time. She was hilarious about the differences between British and American English.  Apparently, I wasn't the only one who was curious about "dress smart" and about why it was safe to bring "torches" on airplanes.  (Note: it isn't, unless you are talking about what we call flashlights.)

Among us, is a survivor who was one of the first people interviewed for the iWitness project and who was one of the children rescued by the Soviet soldiers on January 27th, 1945.  Paula Lebovics spoke with us briefly and will be with us more throughout the trip.

Paula at liberation--the girl in the middle. I think. :)

Paula this evening, speaking to Stephen Smith, the director of the USC Shoah Foundation.
Note all the camera crews.  There were points when big microphones were hanging over tables to hear conversations...

Stephen Smith spoke with us all and I was so impressed with his language that I ordered one of the books he wrote about starting the first Holocaust Center in England.  Among his insights, these are a few which stirred up thoughts in my over-active mind:

     This is an era of history that never should have happened but which did happen.
     In the next week, there will be a lot of media coverage.
     People will be asking "What does it mean?" "Why did it happen?"  "What are the answers?"
     There will be lots of platitudes and moments of contemplating human suffering and survival.
     There will be revelations about the past from survivors, through their stories and their reactions.
     But there won't be a huge reaction from the world, not right away.
     The education piece, our part of the Past is Present puzzle, is crucial.
     Education is what makes a lasting reaction.
     We are meeting to discuss something very difficult to teach about.  
     It takes courage, professionalism and skill.
     
Then, Zygmunt Stepinski, the director of educational programming from the Museum of the History of Polish Jews, spoke to us.  I am SOOOOOOO excited about going to this museum tomorrow.  Beyond excited.  It has been organized by people from Poland, Israel, the US  to tell the story of the Jewish people in Poland.

I think I will write about this more tomorrow, but it has been hard to grow up as a member of a culture that only comes up in schooling when the topic of persecution is discussed.  We are so much more than that!

Zygmunt Stepinski spoke about the fact that we could have gone straight to Krakow, but there was something important about starting in Warsaw because this museum is about showing how people lived, not just how they died.  The museum took twenty years to plan. Since it opened in October, there have been about 100,000 visitors.   I will be one of the next ones, tomorrow, with an amazing group of people.

I won't go through all the details but I will say this much:  I was able to eat the food.  Whew.  I was worried that it would be all meaty and you would be able to see what the animal used to be and I'd get whiny like a three year old or complain that things touched.  I'm not good like that, especially when I have slept very little on a plane the night before.  But the mushroom soup (more like potato soup with some mushrooms) was the best ever, and there were spinach gnocchi and more potatoes, so I was fine.  And bread!  Europeans know how to do bread.

For my friends with allergies, this is an important thing to know.  As of last year, the European Union came up with strict codes for labeling foods with potential allergens.  So, right there on the buffet was a sign posted with pictures and labels (in several languages) of all the potential allergens, and then each item had its name listed next to the code of any relevant allergens.  This would make many of your lives much easier!

These are just some of the allergy codes.  Pretty impressive, huh?