Seeing Things Through Other's Eyes: My Experience with Bloomfield's Identity Project

By Robert Rader, President, CABE (Connecticut Association of Boards of Education)

When Dr. Joseph A. Olzacki, Director of Visual and Performing Arts for Bloomfield Public Schools, invited me to join high school students, some staff and members of the community in a one-day trip to the U.S. Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., I wasn't quite sure what to expect. After all, I had been to the museum years ago, had been to Israel's Holocaust Museum, Yad Vashem, twice, and have even been to a Holocaust Museum in New York City. But, I had never gone with such a group.

The experience turned out to be so much more than just a field trip to the Museum. It was an emotional learning event, the type that board members, staff and even students rarely have the opportunity to experience.

The idea of the day "was to see history through each other's eyes." Dr. Olzacki prepares the 54 students, virtually all members of the high school band, by having them read and discuss the Holocaust and genocide. The idea is a melding of the music and the history, together with social justice, that helps students better understand the world around them and strengthens their creativity. It is part of the "Identity Project," which examines lessons from genocides past and present for life lessons about the future.

What makes this a truly special project is that the learning that took place transcended generations, religion and even race. The adults on the trip (referred to as the "Elders" - a new moniker I was not really ready for) were black, white and a healthy mix of Christians and Jews. The students were all Afro-Caribbean Americans, who had to get up at 3 AM to be there. And, each Elder was teamed with a student for the day.

The Elders were an interesting group of about 20, including two rabbis (one had written about his Holocaust experience and his book was pre-trip required reading for the students); State Senator Jonathan Harris, who got help from the State to support the project; other Holocaust survivors; the head of Hartford Symphony's education department; a leader of a Jewish statewide organization; and community members who were interested in coming.

I was teamed with Kristopher Hodge, a senior who hopes to go to the University of Hartford next year to major in music. He has a quiet, reserved personality among adults, though he certainly had fun with the other students. His father is a pastor, mother a gospel singer and brother a bassist for Mary J. Blige. He is interested primarily in jazz. He wanted to go to the Museum to "get a better idea of what happened in the Holocaust...you can learn only so much from movies."

We left Hartford at around 6:30 am and after landing in Baltimore, we were bused into Washington. As an extra for the group, we met Congressman John Larson outside the Capitol and he spoke to us about the importance of Connecticut in having been the first state with a Constitution. We then stopped at the World War II Memorial, where Dr. Olzacki encouraged students to thank some World War II veterans who pulled up while we were there for what they had done for all of us.

The Museum is a sturdy, stark brick structure meant to look like a concentration camp building. Museum staff begins your tour by providing you with the "passport" of a victim containing his or her life story. We later learned that a number of these survivors actually work in the Museum as volunteers.

As we waited for the elevators to take us up to the exhibits, Jackie Dodd, the Senator's wife, stepped forward and introduced herself. She works as a volunteer at the Museum, too. She spoke to the group about her father, who fought in the South Pacific during World War II and helped liberate prisoner of war camps. Then she described Thomas Dodd's work at the war crimes trials, which has been memorialized by the current Senator, in a book containing the letters he had written to his wife (Letters from Nuremberg: My Father's Narrative of a Quest for Justice).

She talked about Connecticut's legacy of justice and encouraged the students to "never forget what you see here" and to take the message back to all students.

Kristopher

The Museum's exhibits begin with when the Jews in Germany were accepted members of the community and proceed to Hitler taking over, the progressively tougher restrictions and degradations of the Jews, the start of the War and the Nazis capturing much of eastern Europe, where killings began immediately. We saw how the Nazis made the Jews appear to be "less than human" and of course, we saw pictures and artifacts from the death camps and the crematoria. We walked through the exhibits and having done much reading on the Holocaust, I tried to explain to Kristopher what was happening and why.

Kristopher was obviously interested and stuck close. I learned afterwards that he felt a certain closeness between us as we walked through the Museum. He's a quiet student and this was came as something of a surprise to his teachers. We talked about how the Jews' right to practice their professions and attend schools was taken from them, about how others were silent (and even collaborated) with the Nazis and this enabled the anti-Semites to carry out their atrocities. We talked about those who became slave labor and how Kristopher's ancestors, too, might have been slaves.

Kristopher, like me and, I'm sure, like a lot of other people who visit the Museum, struggled with how people could be so inhuman to each other. He felt "shocked" on learning that Hitler had been democratically "voted in." He said that, "sometimes the people who vote don't make good choices and the people who don't vote are also contributing to which way the leadership goes." How apt during this political season.

He felt "anger at some of the sights, because the Nazis didn't give people a chance to speak and I felt bad for them - they had no control" over what was happening to them. He said that, "Me, being black and understanding slavery, can't understand why everyone can't be viewed as human."

Kristopher's feelings were obviously echoed by the other students and the adults. They walked through the exhibits in a hushed, almost reverential quiet '€' not silence, since there was much explaining and commenting. But, like the other over 1.7 million people who tour the museum each year, there was a feeling of awe, as if merely seeing the photographs and exhibits was a way of, to paraphrase the great writer and Holocaust survivor Eli Wiesel, bearing witness to what had happened.

After lunch, a representative of the Museum spoke to the group about Darfur and the genocide that is going on in the Sudan. We spoke about the feelings that the students and adults had, about anger and feeling overwhelmed. And, how going to the Museum required some to face their own fears.

"Don't Be A Bystander"

Wiesel had said that "what hurts the victim most is not the cruelty of the oppressor, but the silence of the bystander." During the discussion, Senator Harris asked the students to learn to "not be a bystander" when bad things are done by one person to another.

He encouraged students to get educated about what they could do, to speak up when they heard inappropriate jokes or remember in school halls. "We learned today that when even small things strip away one's dignity, it can lead to worse things...Speaking up about smaller things can 'condition' you to speak out about larger things."

Later, on the way back to the airport, we had the opportunity to stop at the Lincoln Memorial and we saw where Martin Luther King had made his "I Have A Dream" speech. Somehow that seemed a fitting and uplifting way to end our journey.

Reflections

I had expected the day to be about seeing through Kristopher's eyes and the eyes of the other students. There was certainly much of that. But, interestingly, I realized that Kristopher's reactions were not any different than mine. We were both appalled at the sights we saw and had trouble processing the inhumanity of man.

I think that those of us who shared the day came away with a deeper and more meaningful understanding of the importance of and strength in diversity and respecting the dignity of all people. These lessons touched every member of our diverse group.

This shared experience, learning about the worst horrors mankind has ever perpetrated, together with seeing symbols of the best of our own nation's ideals, reinforced the finest, the most caring, most unifying and the most positive emotions in all of us. And, I believe that on some level, no matter whether the individual was a student, a teacher, a member of the community or one who just wanted to be part of this event, we were affected in the same way.

I thank Dr. Olzacki, Kristopher and the other students and the Bloomfield community, for letting me be part of this amazing experience.

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JFACT, The Jewish Federation Association of Connecticut, is a statewide advocacy organization, representing the 9 Jewish Federations, 4 Jewish Community Centers, 8 Jewish Family Services, and 3 Jewish nursing homes in Connecticut. JFACT is the government and community relations arm of the Jewish community and lobbies for legislation that is of interest to Connecticut's Jewish community.

Today is Monday, September 6, 2010.

Last modified Sunday, September 21, 2008