Thursday, July 2, 2009

What Do We Think About Each Other?

At dinner on Tuesday, we were joined by students in a Polish Intercultural Youth Program that has a very special exchange with Israel. These students receive an Israeli in their home for 10 days to get acquainted. Later the Polish students spend a semester in Israel, living with a family. We spoke with 23-year-old university student Marta Szcaypior. She found that the family with whom she stayed in Petach Tikvah had roots in the city of Czestochowa in which she grew up. The experience of living in Israel and learning Hebrew clearly had made a deep impression on her. The most telling thing perhaps – she described walking through a Warsaw park with her boyfriend this Sunday and hearing Hebrew being spoken – and wanting to go closer and be part of it. I asked if she had visited any of the concentration camps. She said that her parents had taken her when she was 12 or 13 – and that she had gone back a number of times on her own.

In my experience, I have seen large groups of Polish teenagers visiting Auschwitz. This is of questionable utility (although we Americans do it big time, too): teenagers are going to act like teenagers. Isn’t it a better idea to see these places with one’s family? Or alone? I know that I found the giggling and poking that is typical among teenagers to be rather unsettling on previous visits. We’ll see what I’ll see this time. . .

1 comment:

  1. I know it's nowhere near the same, but I prefer to go to the Holocaust museum alone and to be alone with my thoughts. Any outside noise sometimes can break my thoughts and feelings.

    But then I try to put myself in their shoes. Perhaps their actions are their way of dealing with what they are feeling and seeing.

    It seems to me that any exposure is good exposure. There have been places that my grandparents took me as a kid that at teh time didn't impact me at all and in fact I wasn't a very well behaved kid some of the time either. But now, when I recall them, they have a profound effect on me.

    thanks for making me think.......

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