I promised myself I would be a good blogger and at least update once a week. I slipped! Sorry.
It's been a very interesting and fulfilling time so I should have been documenting it. First - I took my YES exchange students - students from the Middle East who are here on a scholarship - to Chicago last week. We went through the Shedd Acquairium and saw the sights downtown before making our way to Skokie to spend the night. After some amazing deep dish pizza, we retired so we could get up early and go to the Holocaust Museum.
We were a small group - one student from Oman, one from Pakistan, one from Zanzibar, Bangladesh, Lebanon, Yemen and Jordan. We went into the museum and met a friend of mine - Aaron Elster - who is a survivor. Aaron took time to meet the kids and then told him the story of being a hidden child in Poland. He suffered at the hands of the Nazis and then his mother sent him to a friendly Christian women who begrudgingly let him sleep in her attic. He was there for over two years! He got a little bit of food and water each day to survive - it was hot in the summer and cold in the winter. He was covered with filth and with lice - I cannot imagine!
They listened with open hearts and open minds. Four of group had already committed to writing a children's book about Holocaust stories from Alabania where Muslim families hid Jews. They had heard some stories but it's completely different when you hear one from a survivor themselves. It becomes very real.
Aaron suggested we sit in on a school tour who was going to hear from a survivor by the name of Barbara Steiner. She spoke about growing up in Warsaw, being in the Warsaw ghetto (and part of the resistance) and then spending the rest of the war in a concentration camp. The students - again - were spellbound by her talk.
The rest of the museum was very interesting too, but there is nothing like hearing from a survivor.
We ended the trip with a treat - I introduced them to the Cheesecake Factory! Needless to say, everyone loved it! What's not to love?
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