Into the past.

Today was the most profound teaching experience I’ve ever had, the culmination of years of work, reflection, research, and networking. Today Michał, Renata, and Hubert from Yahad-in Unum led Tom, the students, and I deep into the past. They introduced us to the world of witnesses, children who long ago sat atop trees or perched on walls and watched genocide happen before their eyes, and now as old men these scenes play over and over in their minds. The witnesses guided us to these places to relay what they saw. And so we visited sites in the middle of woods where no one has been for so very long, where horror still hangs in the air and cries, although silent, still ring in one’s ears in these places linked to the Wolborski Forest and to the landscape outside Tomaszow Mazowiecki. Today, at these execution sites, Kaddish was finally said by one of my students. To witness all of this, to hear Elena’s sweet, sweet voice singing the Mourner’s Kaddish while surrounded by my ODU students gave me goose bumps. A long path culminated in that moment with a feeling that we had been quite right to come to Poland to study the Holocaust, we had done something of great importance. In that moment I felt proud of my seven students and their willingness to believe in humanity, even when confronted with the horrific past.