Into the Pages of History

Friday, March 23, 2007

Page 11

AT THE SIDEBAR (Column)

Into the Pages of History

By J’AMY PACHECO

I recently purchased a new book for my 11-year-old. Titled, “101 Places You Gotta See Before You’re 12,” it provides a list of general locations and sights to be sought out for exploration and includes such suggestions as a waterfall, a great estate, a superlative place and a place where something supernatural is reported to have taken place.

Since my daughter and I usually prepare a “Summer Fun Wish List” of things to do during her summer vacations, I thought the book might help us come up with some interesting ideas.

Number 101 in the book is a place that you discover on your own. Oddly enough, that’s the one we started with — unintentionally.

Each year, students at my daughter’s school are required to complete a community service project of their own choosing. It can be as simple as picking up trash in a community park, volunteering at a library or visiting a nursing home. Never one to take the easy way out, my daughter last year ran a campaign to educate people about the dangers of leaving children and pets in the car, and held a poster contest for kids.

Disturbed by newspaper accounts of race riots at high schools in our county, she decided this year to write a play that she hoped would convince children at the elementary school level not to grow up and start hating their fellow students.

It was a great idea, but she had no idea what to say in her play. I suggested we make a visit to the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles. I thought it might be a good place to start trying to understand this thing we call “hate.”

Shortly after our arrival, a museum guide mentioned in his orientation lecture that several survivors of Nazi concentration camps would be speaking that afternoon. My initial thought was that we would skip the lectures, as they would likely be too intense for my daughter. But then the guide mentioned how the number of Holocaust survivors is dwindling every day.

“Their experiences are passing from the pages of memory to the pages of history,” he pointed out. “Soon, there won’t be anyone left to tell the story of what happened.”

Realizing that this might be the only opportunity my daughter would have to hear personally from a Holocaust survivor, I decided we should go.

Elisabeth Mann was the daughter of a Hungarian war hero whose family was ultimately betrayed by its own countrymen. After being forced to wear a yellow star marking her as a Jew, Mann was stunned when grocers refused to sell food to her family. Her sister disappeared after being removed by Nazis from a train on a business trip, and the family never learned what became of her.

Mann’s family was eventually forced into a crowded railroad cattle car for a four-day journey to a concentration camp. Others in the car died during the journey, but their bodies remained in the car until they reached their destination.

Upon arrival, Mann’s family was forced to separate: women and children in one line, single women in another, men in the third. Mann’s brother, who had turned 13 and undergone the Jewish rite of passage marking him as a man just months before, asked which line he should join.

Since he had become ill on the trip, Mann advised him to go with their mother as a child. Tears rolled down her face as she revealed the result of her instruction: those in the line for women and children were immediately taken to the gas chambers.

Mann related her concentration camp experiences and the suffering of her fellow Jews with anger not tempered by the passage of time. I can’t blame her.

Since Mann’s accent is very thick, my daughter was unable to understand some of what she said. I suspect if she had, she might not have slept that night. But she saw my tears, and comprehended the enormity of the tragedy.

Later, on the museum tour, we found ourselves seated in a reproduction of a gas chamber, listening to a recorded voice. Although I knew nothing would hurt us, even I was nervous wondering what would happen in the room. It made a tremendous impact on both of us.

My daughter still hasn’t figured out what she can say to make kids stop growing up to hate others who are perceived as “different,” whether because of race, religion, sexual orientation or anything else. But we came away knowing one thing – learning about the results of hate is something everybody should experience at least once.

At any age.