Reflect and Educate
As I was trying to find something to blog about, I looked up Holocaust survivor stories and found a website that had a collection of them (http://holocaustlearning.org/survivors). I read through some of the stories, and at the end, most of the survivors dedicated their post-Holocaust life to educating the youth about the Holocaust and sharing the importance of treating everyone equally. One of the survivors, Liesel Carter, is a member of the HSFA and stresses that the Holocaust should be an unforgettable event that the future generations learn from. Arek Hersh, who was affected by the Holocaust in Poland, wrote a book about his experiences called A Detail of History. Today, Arek goes around to schools and gives speeches to students about building a better world. I found it so heartwarming to see that even after going through such a traumatic time in their life, the survivors decided to use those hardships to educate the youth and create a better foundation for the future so that others wouldn’t have to go through the same thing.
In a way, Art Spiegelman does the same thing with his graphic novel Maus. In his novel, we can see that his father, Vladek, shares his past experiences with Art; when Art apologizes for “[making him] talk so much”, Vladek replies with “Nevermind… always it’s a pleasure when you visit” (Spigelman 117). Throughout the novel, Vladek insists that he gives Art the complete and honest story of his past so that Art is able to deliver it in an authentic way to the public. Just as the Holocaust survivors use their experiences to educate the public, I believe that it’s important that we’re able to hear stories from the past and not only mourn for the tragedies and losses but also reflect and learn.
The song for the week:
The Deli - 5:32 PM // https://youtu.be/ADp9P3p85w0
If you still have homework to do and it’s past 5:32 pm, try listening to this song while you finish and tell me what you think :)
I totally agree with you that so many of these survivors actually took advantage of this unfortunate experience and use it to educate others. I think the one thing that sets Maus apart from the others, though, is the fact that Art wrote this not necessarily to educate as much as to inform. He doesn't explicitly tell us to learn from it, but we still automatically do.
ReplyDeleteHi Esther, I think what your saying is absolutely correct. All of us need to learn from the Holocaust for our futures and for the future of the world. I think Maus does this in a unique way because it is structured simply as a conversation between a father and his son. This keeps the authenticity of the situations that Vladek faced because nothing is censored. Also, I'm glad to see that Holocaust survivors are educating the public; like you said, it's very heartwarming. Anyways, great blog! (I love the song)
ReplyDelete