ACCIDENTAL FICTION

I wrote my novel by accident.

My goal was to address a gap in Holocaust education and encourage educators to consider two rarely asked questions:

When we teach about Holocaust history, what's the best way to include—alongside Jewish Holocaust narratives—the Roma, disabled, homosexual, political, and many other victims of Nazism? And why are these victim groups so often forgotten?

To address that gap, I started to create educational materials and easy-to-implement lesson plans for teachers and school districts interested in these hidden histories. But putting together an educational unit around historical data that relied on encyclopedic reports full of dry facts and figures wasn't cutting it.

After all, much of Holocaust education is taught through compelling film (Schindler's List, The Pianist, The Diary of Anne Frank, Fateless, and so on) and fiction (Number The Stars, The Book Thief, The Devil's Arithmetic, The Reader, and others), all of which humanize history through individual stories. These books and movies go beyond dates and events to underscore key concepts of human behavior in the lead up and response to genocide.

And so I began to write a series of vignettes to make the narratives of Roma, homosexual, disabled, political, and other victims of Nazism engaging and relevant to middle school and high school students. Based on historical truth, I created a handful of fictional characters—all teenagers—each of whom, through a compelling short story, would represent the central narrative of a distinct victim community.

To tie the stories together, I set the stories in Nazi-era Berlin. And I found a way to place them all in early 1943. To stress the immediacy of each narrative, I wrote each story in present tense, first person so that events were unfolding in the moment.

For example, here, nineteen-year-old Tsura, a young Romani woman, is plotting to free her family from Marzahn, a Nazi encampment for 'Gypsies' at the edge of Berlin:

     Biting the skin on my chapped lips, I walk almost as fast as
     the chilling wind slipping between my neck and turned-up collar.
     The woolen overcoat hides the curves of my breasts and my
     dark hair is tucked tight into a flat cap. I look like a man—
     intentionally so—and feel stronger for it.

Surprisingly (or perhaps unsurprisingly), as those single stories developed, they became entwined with one another.

Ruth and Alex, I discovered, are step-siblings. And Elise saves the life of street-smart Marko after they run into each other in Berlin's Hakescher Market. Elise, I realized, is a member of the Nazi Girls' League, but rarely talks about it to her best friend, Ruth. Meanwhile, Marko's sister Tsura, a member of an anti-Nazi resistance group, is over-protective of her younger cousin Kizzy who hates being treated like a kid. I also discovered that two of the characters are in love (take a guess which two!).

I was suddenly writing my first novel and it was turning into a bit of a page-turner!

I shared my first draft of TRAIN with some friends, colleagues, and members of my family who were as excited to read my book as I loved writing it. Their feedback led to a few more drafts and submissions to literary agents and a couple of publishers.

While I received flurries of rejections, a number of scholars and educators in the Holocaust education field were getting excited about the book and its accompanying curriculum.

A series of introductions and exciting moments led me to author and editor Christa Desir. Christa became my editor and, as soon as she took a look at my opening chapters, she pointed out a problem (echoed in the feedback I'd already received):

With multiple voices narrating interweaving accounts in present tense, first person, TRAIN wasn't working. The style was too jarring. And the individual voices sounded too similar. It all had to become one story.

I rewrote the first chapters of TRAIN in past tense, third person close point-of-view. The new style seemed to work. I was able to tell the story and still retain the important thoughts spinning inside the head of each central character. Here's the same scene as above, now re-written, plus a little more:

     They'll never know we were here.
         No sound. No impression in the dirt. Tsura had learned to keep
     her head below the brick walls of the city. To become the shadows
     and sidestep the light. She could recite each route by heart. Over
     railway lines and through private gardens, across main roads and
     public parks. But some checkpoints were impossible to avoid.
          A crowd had gathered close to the U-Bahn station. Two young
     soldiers blocked the entrance.
          "What's going on?" Tsura asked them.
          "The train station is closed," one of the soldiers said. He held
     out his gloved hand. "Papers?"
          Tsura handed over her identity documents for inspection. "What
     happened?"
          "Someone fell on the tracks."
          "Why are you dressed like a man?" the second soldier asked,
     rifle at his side.
          Tsura pointed at the sleeves of his jacket which didn't even
     reach his wrists. "Why are you dressed like a schoolboy?"
          The other soldier laughed. As he unfolded and checked her
     papers, his grin widened. "Nice to meet you, Greta. We share a
     birthday."
          "Lucky me," Tsura said. Her fake smile matched her false
     identity.

Today, I reached an exciting milestone. I've re-written all of TRAIN in the past tense, third person close. And I just sent the manuscript to Christa for comments.

Although anything could happen on this exciting journey toward publication, there's a chance TRAIN (and its accompanying curriculum) will be in print and online in early 2015. Stay tuned.


(Post updated in December 2014 to reflect recent manuscript edits.)

"IS THERE A CANOPY IN STORE FOR ME?"

What do the fictional characters of Fiddler On The Roof think about same-sex marriage?

On Tuesday, speaking during the Illinois House of Representatives debate on marriage equality, State Rep. David Harris summarized the acclaimed musical Fiddler On The Roof. He then used its plot points to argue against equal rights for people who are gay or lesbian. Eager to know what others thought of his confusing analogy, I tracked down the residents of the Russian shtetl of Anatevka. The villagers’ comments (translated here from the original Hollywood-accented Yiddish) were surprising and insightful:

Do You Love Me?

“I’m flattered and honored,” kvelled milkman Tevye (who did not provide his last name). “To be referenced by Illinois State Rep. David Harris has been a lifelong ambition of mine, right alongside escaping persecution and building a dream-home for my wife, Golde. And not only that—David Harris said my name on the House floor and he almost pronounced it correctly. What a mensch!”

As she watched the marriage equality debate, Tevye’s wife Golde paid attention to the politicians who explained that her heterosexual marriage was under threat. “After 25 years of cooking Tevye’s meals, cleaning his house, and milking his cow, I was worried that the gays and the lesbians would ruin everything for us. Would our marriage last another 25 years? Would Tevye still love me? But, after the bill passed, my Tevye reassured me that our healthy bickering and kvetching about each other would continue until one of us dies. Thank God. So, now my only fear is that I’ll be expected to invite these newly married gays and lesbians for Shabbes dinner all at once. I mean, where would they all sit?”

Matchmaker, Matchmaker

Golde’s friend Yente, the local matchmaker, was incredibly excited when the marriage equality bill SB10 passed with 61 votes to 54. “Oy, it’s vonderful!” she clapped. “All the boys and boys, and all the girls and girls I can now set up together! They have vebsites and smart phone apps. for hook-ups, I know, but you just can’t beat a good old fashioned shidduch [arranged marriage]. To be honest, with a same sex-marriage, I’m not sure vhich side of the family will need to pay the dowry, but, as I’ve said before, even the vorst husband, God forbid, is better than no husband, God forbid.”

Newlyweds Motel and Tzeitel Kamzoil were somewhat apathetic to the passage of the bill. Motel, a tailor and rising fashion designer who is rumored to appear on Season 82 of Project Runway, explained: “All these Illinoisans are running around calling the vote a wonder of wonders, miracle of miracles, but Tzeitel and I don’t see what all the fuss is about. It doesn’t make a difference to us.” Tzeitel, Tevye and Golde’s eldest daughter, added: “It doesn’t affect us, true, but we’re still delighted that every person in the Land of Lincoln will soon be able to find and catch and marry her or his own perfect match.”

Tradition!

With Tevye and Golde’s fourth and fifth daughters still unmarried, Tevye acknowledges that marriage equality could now double each daughter’s chance of finding a husband or wife: “I’m all about TRADITION!—as David Harris reminded us—but my children and grandchildren come first. As my son-in-law Motel once told me, even a poor tailor is entitled to some happiness.”

“Representative Davis Harris doesn’t get it,” Tevye’s son-in-law Perchik snapped. Perchik is known for his modern interpretations of biblical texts and for insisting on dancing with his girlfriend, Hodel (now his wife), at a family wedding. Perchik argued, with passion in his voice and a camp skip in his step, “David Harris failed to understand that the story of Anatevka is about the history of antisemitism, the roots of prejudice, and the struggle of social minorities to live in freedom and without fear.”

“Exactly!” Hodel agreed, speaking over Skype from Siberia, far from the home she loves. “The central point of the musical is that traditions change over time. As we danced at my sister’s wedding, Russian thugs, encouraged by the authorities, set the venue on fire. Yet David Harris has the chutzpah to use the historically-inspired 1905 story of our Jewish family’s struggle to justify the contemporary discrimination of another minority group that simply wants to live and love in peace.”

Sunrise, Sunset

Tevye’s daughter, Chava, was also unhappy with Rep. David Harris. “I’ve been awake from sunset to sunrise thinking about what he said,” Chava sighed. David Harris cited Chava’s quarrel with her father over her marriage to Fyedka, a Christian man, as an example of tradition stretched too far. “At first, Papa didn’t approve of my marriage to a non-Jew,” Chava explained. “But at the very end of our Tony Award winning play and Academy Award winning film, Papa gave me his blessing. 'May God be with you,' he called out to me. I know it’s a three hour film, but it’s available on YouTube, for goodness sake; there’s just no excuse for misquoting the plot.”

“And on top of that,” Fyedka chimed in, “David Harris seems to not realize that in the United States it’s perfectly fine to marry someone of a different faith. So his analogy was as unstable as...” His father-in-law Tevye interrupted: “You could say his analogy was as shaky as a fiddler on the roof.”

A Blessing On Your Head

On hearing the news of the passing of the marriage bill, a number of shtetlfolk were overjoyed. “To life, to life, L’Chayim!” shouted local butcher and business owner Lazar Wolf and he pledged one month’s profits in support of defending the bill from lawmakers who may try to repeal the new law.

Even voices from beyond the grave shared their elation: “A blessing on your head, Mazal Tov, Mazal Tov,” sang Golde’s late mother, “To see a daughter wed, Mazal Tov, Mazal Tov.” Tevye, who heard her voice in his dream, found himself changing his mind on equal rights for gay and lesbian people: “I’m now certain that her blessing was a sign that full marriage equality will become a new tradition for all of us. As my sweet, gentle child Chavaleh once told me, the world is changing. In fact, if I were a rich man, I’d consider moving to Illinois and running against David Harris in the Republican primaries, biddy-biddy-biddy-biddy-bum.”

Tevye had to cut his interview short. But as he ran off to deliver the last milk cans to his neighbors before dragging his cart home before dinnertime, he called back with a final thought. “You know, there’s a bigger lesson here,” he said, looking up at the beautiful, autumn sunset. “As the good book says, thou shalt not cite a Broadway musical when arguing against gay rights.”

TO MY TEACHER, MR. PASZEK

You were angry. “If you have ever called Dominic a fairy,” you snapped with your arms crossed, “get up right now and stand at the front of the class.”

I’d heard the fairy slur many times. Dominic was a musician. I’m sure you would have remembered him. He was slim and talented and softly spoken. When he sang, he sounded like a choirboy. For a few years at our all-boys-school on the northeastern edge of London, Dominic was one of my closest friends.

Dominic sat at his desk and looked at the floor, all eyes on him. You, our teacher, watched us as the classroom filled with the sound of scraping chairs as some of the boys started to stand.

I once called Dominic a fairy, too. I don’t know why. Dominic was my good friend, but that didn’t stop me from participating in teasing him. Blame high school culture, blame the ever-present homophobia, blame kids saying stupid things without thinking, but bullying is bullying.

And I found myself pushing back my chair and walking to the front of the room to join the majority of my classmates. Only a handful of students remained seated. You, Mr. Paszek, a young mathematics teacher who was new to our school, must have been astounded to watch most of your students standing, the backs of our school uniforms to the chalkboard, looking at Dominic with our collective embarrassment and regret.

That was 1992. I was almost 14 years old.

Today, I think you’d be proud to know, alongside classes on the Holocaust and genocide, I teach about rape culture and sexual health, college hazing and addiction, poverty and homelessness. And I teach about homophobic and transphobic bullying and their affects on depression and suicide amongst young people who are lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT). I teach about the It Gets Better Project, a virtual support community for LGBT youth. The project’s message to its audience is clear: Don’t despair; You can survive the bullying; Your adult life is going to be great; You are amazing.

A week or so ago, I came across a video clip posted to Facebook that changed the way I think about fighting homophobia.

In 2008, in Oxnard, California, 15-year-old Lawrence King asked 14-year-old Brandon McInerney to be his Valentine. Two days later, in front of their classmates in the school computer lab, Brandon took out a gun and shot Lawrence in the head. Lawrence died in hospital and, in 2011, Brandon pleaded guilty to second-degree murder while the hate crime charges against him were dropped.

The recently released HBO documentary Valentine Road deals with the events surrounding the shooting. In one scene, Shirley Brown, a former teacher of murdered student Lawrence King, explains, “I knew his inclination. He had discussed it with me. When he asked me what to do about the situation, my response to him was Nothing, what to do about this situation is nothing, and to keep it private, and to dwell upon it.” Lawrence, it seems, had little support in coming out as gay.

Ms. Brown continues, “I relate to Brandon [the murderer] because I could see my own self being in that very same position. I don’t know if I would have taken a gun, but a good, swift kick in the butt might work really well.” In other words, Brown believed that it was Lawrence’s gay “behavior,” rather than Brandon’s prejudice, that led to Brandon’s violent response. According to his teacher, Lawrence King—the boy who asked another boy to be his Valentine—brought his murder upon himself.

And so, it seems, in schools around the world, the young bullies might not be the heart of the problem. Teachers and administrators, not to mention parents, need to see that their words and actions—and inactions—have immeasurable repercussions. They are the adults. They set the example.

You, Mr. Paszek, looked at us with deep disappointment and sadness as we stood at the front of your classroom in silence. We all returned to our seats knowing that calling Dominic a fairy was wrong.

Two or three years later, you—the young, funny, talented, energetic Mr. Paszek—died. A rumor about you—quietly confirmed by other teachers—spread through the school: “Mr. Paszek was gay; he died of AIDS.”

My high school’s response to your death was minimal. I can barely remember the announcement. There were no big speeches about you from our headmaster. There were no memorial ceremonies for you. There were no plaques for you. No flowers for you. No candles. No silent ovations. Only rumors and inadequate explanations leading to a continual silence. Almost denial.

This was mid-1990s Britain and, under Prime Minister Thatcher’s Conservative government and the 1988 passage of Section 28, all British schools were prohibited from “promoting”—i.e., “talking about”—homosexuality.

And there I was, a gay teenager learning about reproduction and teenage pregnancy with no way of talking to my teachers about my sexuality and my specific questions about safe gay sex and my fears about HIV and AIDS. The British law wasn’t struck down until 2003. I was 25.

Today across the U.S., conservative lawmakers continue to block anti-bullying legislation that would protect LGBT school students from harassment. And in many states across the country, schools continue to fire teachers for being gay or lesbian or transgender while continuing to employ, tolerate, and even promote teachers like Shirley Brown who blame homophobic violence, and even murder, on LGBT youth themselves.

At the time, Mr. Paszek, I was too young and too naive to realize the significance of your presence. When you died, our school did not honor you. Yet, as my teacher, you instilled in me values that I still hold today. You stood up for Dominic and against homophobia and, by doing so, you asked us—your students—to stand up, too.


(Note: The names of Mr. Paszek and Dominic have been changed to protect privacy.)

THE OLYMPIC SHAMES

Leading up to the 1936 Olympics, Hitler’s government re-opened a number of gay bars and cafés in Berlin as part of a broader campaign to conceal Nazi violence and hateful rhetoric.

At the 2014 Winter Games in Sochi, what will Putin do?

The world was watching as Nazi Germany prepared for the 1936 Summer Olympics. Activists, politicians, and organizations around the globe called for a boycott. The Jewish community in Germany and abroad hoped the Games would draw attention to Nazi antisemitism (the anti-Jewish Nuremberg Laws had been passed just months earlier).

Intending to impress and dazzle the world, in the weeks before the opening ceremony, Hitler ordered the “clean up” of Berlin.

The Nazi government removed and relocated Berlin residents they deemed undesirable. Roma and Sinti people were evicted and transferred to Nazi “Gypsy” encampments on the outskirts of the city with the false promise that they could return to their homes once the Olympics were over.

At the same time, mindful of public opinion and mounting international criticism, the Nazi government temporarily relaxed its oppressive policies and actions against certain racial and social minorities. Nazi rhetoric was tempered. Anti-Jewish signs and pervasive antisemitic propaganda were hidden from sight. Gay bars and cafés that the Nazis had shut down were re-opened. Foreign homosexuals were not arrested.

For the two weeks of the 1936 Olympiad, the Nazi capital resembled elements of the open, tolerant, vibrant Berlin of the late 1920s.

Learning from history isn’t easy.

Before the 2004 Athens Olympics, the Greek government evicted some 2,700 Roma from their homes and created a housing crisis that continues to this day. These evictions were mostly ignored by the international press.

In the months leading up to the 2008 Beijing Olympic Games, the Chinese government removed and relocated hundreds of thousands of people living in poverty, people who were homeless, people involved in the sex trade, and other people deemed undesirable. The world watched the spectacular Beijing opening ceremony, mostly oblivious or indifferent to China’s human rights abuses.

Again and again, governments with shameful human rights records have been awarded the honor of hosting the Olympics. Each time, discrimination and violence is overlooked or excused. Giving an oppressive regime the opportunity to host the Games could lead to improvements for human rights, we tell ourselves.

And now, with the 2014 Winter Olympics in Sochi in southwestern Russia just months away, Putin’s government has passed an outrageous law that makes it possible for police to arrest and jail anyone—Russian citizens, foreign tourists, Olympic athletes—who voices support for the rights of gay and lesbian people. A senior public official has gone as far as calling for gay people to be banned from organ donation: “Their hearts, in case of the automobile accident, should be buried in the ground or burned as unsuitable for the continuation of life.”

There are reports of a recent increase in government-sanctioned violence against gay, lesbian, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) people in Russia (or at least an increase in media attention), leading to calls for LGBT-friendly countries to grant asylum to Russian victims and targets of homophobic and transphobic violence.

News organizations, bloggers, and activists have compared Russia’s new anti-gay laws with the anti-Jewish and anti-homosexual laws of Nazi Germany, citing parallels between the Nazi-hosted Olympics of 1936 and the upcoming Sochi Winter Games. Just as the Nazi Games raised questions about the participation of athletes of Jewish or African descent (a number of Jewish and Black sportspeople competed and won medals in Berlin), LGBT athletes and LGBT spectators at the 2014 Games could face harassment, arrest, and imprisonment.

Activists are calling for a boycott of Putin’s Olympics. Boycotts of Russian products have begun (gay bars in Chicago and New York have stopped buying and serving Russian vodka, for example). And there are calls for public protests, to be led by Games participants and medal winners, that would dare Russian police to arrest and jail Olympic athletes.

When President Obama cancelled his recent meeting with President Putin, although he made clear his opposition to the idea of a boycott, he took the opportunity to speak out in support of LGBT athletes and against Russia’s homophobic legislation.

When the Berlin Olympics of 1936 came to an end, Nazi Germany returned to business as usual. The gay bars and cafés were boarded up again. The Nazi roundup, deportation, torture, and killing of homosexual men resumed. Later, the Roma prisoners of the Nazi “Gypsy” encampments were deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau and elsewhere. The regime’s discriminatory anti-Jewish laws accelerated into meticulously planned and implemented genocide.

In the coming months, even if Putin tones down his anti-gay rhetoric, even if he softens legal restrictions and threats of arrests over the duration of the Games, there’s a good chance that the persecution of LGBT Russians will return in full force once the Olympic athletes and media have returned home.

We cannot be silent. Every person who chooses to participate in the Sochi Games—as an athlete, as a vendor, or as a spectator, including those watching from home—must do something that draws attention to the plight of LGBTs in Russia. The international community, particularly each country that has pledged to protect the rights of LGBT people, has a responsibility to voice its objection to Putin’s anti-gay legislation in the strongest possible way.

GAYS, GYPSIES & GENOCIDE

“How did you get into Holocaust education?” is a common question and I tend to answer differently depending on who’s asking and what’s on my mind.

Why I Do What I Do: Reason #3

Exactly 69 years ago, Nazi guards at Auschwitz murdered in one night almost all Birkenau prisoners categorized as “Gypsies.”

Three months earlier, when Auschwitz guards surrounded and sealed off the Birkenau Zigeunerlager (Gypsy camp), the prisoners armed themselves with shovels and iron pipes and refused to leave their barracks. In response, over several weeks, Auschwitz administrators transferred Roma and Sinti prisoners capable of work to other camps. Just under 3,000 people—mostly children, the elderly, and the sick—remained.

On the night of August 2nd 1944, Birkenau guards marched with their guns into the Gypsy camp and forced the women, men, and children toward and into the gas chambers.

Until a few years ago, I didn’t know that the Nazis had systematically sterilized, ghettoized, and murdered people of Roma and Sinti descent. Just as the Jewish community refers to the Nazi genocide as the Shoah—catastrophe—, the Roma community uses the Romani term Porajmos—devouring. The Nazi regime and its collaborators murdered approximately 25% of the one million Roma and Sinti living in Europe.

Yet the Roma and Sinti were not recognized as victims of Nazism until 1979.

The Nazi genocide of European Jewry echoed through familial and community memories into my 1980s childhood. The Holocaust films we watched in Jewish youth clubs, the Jewish Holocaust survivors we listened to at school, and the hushed conversations we overheard at home ensured that our Jewish identities would be molded by a Jewish responsibility to remember our dead. The dead Sinti and Roma were never mentioned.

It wasn’t until 2005 that I started to notice.

I’d just moved from London to Chicago. I was getting used to the larger food portions and the divisive politics. And I started to become involved in the gay and trans rights movement. I came across a news article that would change the way I think about Holocaust history: In January 2005, world leaders gathered at Auschwitz-Birkenau to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the camp. But Polish authorities had prevented representatives of the gay community from attending.

I asked one of my professors if, instead of sitting an upcoming exam, I could research and write a paper on Holocaust memory, focusing on how and why the narratives of homosexual victims of Nazism had been pushed to the margins of genocide commemoration.

I knew a fair amount about the Jewish Holocaust narrative, but I felt embarrassed, as a politically engaged gay guy, that I knew so little about the Nazis’ persecution of homosexuals. I began to explore books and articles. I didn’t know about the origins of the pink triangle. Or the German anti-homosexuality law Paragraph 175. Or that the Nazis considered lesbians non-threatening—a euphemism, perhaps, for “easy to rape.” I learned about the Nazis’ forced castration and arbitrary torture of homosexual prisoners. In some concentration camps, concerned about masturbation, the Nazis forced homosexual prisoners to sleep with their arms outside of their blankets, even in the dead of winter.

My work led me to ask questions about collective memory and silenced histories.

I learned that, after liberation in 1945, British and American lawyers recommended that homosexual prisoners of the Nazi camps be re-incarcerated. Homosexual survivors were denied reparations. Paragraph 175 remained on Germany’s books for decades. And in the 1990s, Ultra-Orthodox rabbis and conservative Christian clergy protested against any inclusion or mention of homosexual victims in U.S. Holocaust museums. Homosexuals persecuted during the war were not considered victims of Nazism—and did not qualify for reparations—until 2002.

Marginalized victimhood became the focus of my doctoral research. And my work broadened. Surely, I began to argue, if a goal of Holocaust education is to identify warning signs of future atrocities, then students should learn about the relationships between different forms of Nazi prejudice, policy, and persecution. This approach is especially vital in the face of continued government-led oppression of Roma, LGBT, and other minority communities around the world.

We can’t understand—not fully—any one of these victim group narratives without the others. The Nazis conducted experiments with gas as a method of murder on people with disabilities before building the gas chambers and ovens that consumed the Jews, Sinti, and Roma. While the Nazis tried to find a “cure” for homosexuality, they considered people of Jewish or Gypsy or African descent as “incurable.” If we omit the non-Jewish victims of Nazism from our collective Holocaust memory, then we lose something critical to our understanding of the Nazis’ full intentions.

I understand why Simon Wiesenthal was frustrated with the insistence of some prominent historians and scholars that definitions of “The Holocaust” refer to only Jewish victims. Definitions matter. Definitions determine what and who makes it into history textbooks and exhibitions and remembrance ceremonies.

I now focus my work on helping educators find ways to include—meaningfully and appropriately—all of the Nazis’ victims within Holocaust commemoration and education. After all, if the Nazis made room for all of these categories of people in their concentration camps, if they made room for them in the same mass-graves, then we have a responsibility to make room for all of the dead in our classrooms, museums, and memorials.


What I Do What I Do: Reason #1

What I Do What I Do: Reason #2

WHAT THE FAKE?!

(HOW TO TRIVIALIZE TRAUMATIC HISTORY AND TRAUMATIZE YOUR AUDIENCE AT THE SAME TIME.)

In coming to Poland to visit sites of Nazi atrocity, I’ve tried to keep an open mind around my expectations. But there was something I never expected to see.

“Where are we?” A train station, attempting to flee the impending attack. But it’s too late. Three steps forward and we’re surrounded by falling, crashing bombs, darkness, smashing glass, screaming. As we turn the corner, Nazi flags block our path. We weave between them and find ourselves on a street. Uneven cobblestones, a tram. We walk into what looks like a courtroom. A Nazi officer’s hat rests on a podium; behind us, a stranger puts it on. Suddenly there are Swastikas covering the floor. As we step on them, triumphant German music blasts on loudspeakers above—a celebration. After boarding the tram, we arrive at St. Michael’s Prison. At this point, we’re frightened to move on. The bottom of the dark stairwell is out of sight but, compelled to climb down, we discover a dark doorway. Behind the locked door, we hear terrifying sounds—coughing, shouting, screaming. It’s not real, we tell ourselves. Running back up the stairs, we find ourselves in the ghetto, weaving through shadows of dark and narrow alleyways, Jewish faces staring out at us. We look through windows of crowded apartments at white figures, ghosts, paused in sadness, illness. Each step is more frightening. Then sunlight, blinding us—this is a quarry, white stones cover the ground, we look at frozen prisoners in the distance through the barbed wire fence. We are standing in Płaszów Concentration Camp, a site of Nazi brutality and mass-murder...

This is the fairly new exhibition “Kraków under Nazi Occupation 1939-1945” at the actual site of the Schindler Factory (where Oskar Schindler employed Polish Jews and succeeded in saving the lives of over 1,000 people).

We had expected an exhibition focusing on Schindler’s story. Instead, we experienced a twisted theme-park ride. A Holocaust House of Horrors. Genocide at Disneyland. We cringed and gasped and recoiled; not at the often vague historical content, but at the designers’ irresponsible decisions.

When I teach about the design of Holocaust museums, I usually share with students a working theory I have: Holocaust museums in the U.S. are more likely to sensationalize history through immersive environments and simulations than museums in the U.K., Germany, Israel, and elsewhere. The elevators at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington D.C. resemble the interior of the Nazi gas chambers. The floor and walls of a room at the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center mimic the killing fields and mass-graves of the Einsatzgruppen (the Nazis’ mobile shooting squads). The Virginia Holocaust Museum warns on its website, “Guests should wear appropriate attire to crawl through an exhibit.”

Through my work, I warn against such designs because...

1. Trying to recreate the experiences of Holocaust victims and survivors trivializes the actual events and real stories of the Nazi era. We’ll never know what it felt like to suffocate inside a gas chamber. We’ll never know what it felt like to starve in a ghetto before being deported in an over-crowded rail car to an unknown destination. We can never understand, so why try?

2. These kinds of simulated environments can be traumatizing for adults, let alone 12-year-olds. I’ve witnessed engaged groups of teenagers walk through these kinds of spaces only to become shocked and silenced and unable to discuss essential questions about history and human behavior. The intellectual purpose of Holocaust education is stifled by careless emotional manipulation.

3. Many young people already understand suffering. Many live in poverty. Some are refugees or children of refugees from war torn countries. Many are bullied at school, or abused at home. Some are survivors of rape. Many are depressed, many self-harm, some are thinking about suicide. When we teach about genocide and human suffering, we need to remember that a teenager may already be trying to cope with her or his own trauma.

4. These experiential, literal designs are filled with fake artifacts, fake streets, fake ghetto walls, fake sounds, fake barbed fences, even fake documents. Next to these fake objects, designers display real artifacts. But, because so much of these environments are make-believe, the authenticity of the real artifacts is called into question. In the face of Holocaust and genocide denial, this is a serious problem.

But still these immersive exhibitions are created. And it looks like this phenomenon isn’t limited to the U.S.; Fake artifacts and fake experiences have found their way onto the actual sites of Holocaust history.

After walking through the Kraków museum’s exhibition, we met with a member of its design team. We asked her about the immersive design. They visited museums in the U.S. and copied their approaches, she explained. “We had to use some simplifications,” she told us. “The museum world is changing. To get young people involved, you can’t use traditional methods.” Those were her exact words.

Have museum designers lost faith in young people? Do museum professionals perceive teenagers as incapable of having respectful, complex conversations about prejudice and hate and social responsibility?

Immersive design within Holocaust education seems to be spreading—and getting worse. Museums are spending millions to manipulate and patronize and traumatize their visitors, and to simplify and sensationalize and trivialize history. We have to challenge and change this.

WASHING MY HANDS AT THE CEMETERY

Until today, because of my adherence to a specific Jewish law, I had never visited a cemetery.

When my Grandma (my Mum’s mother) died, I stood in the doorway of the funeral building and participated, at a distance, in the short prayer service. When my family walked down to the cemetery for the funeral ceremony, I stayed behind. I sat on a wall, overlooking a flower garden, waiting. My Grandma would have laughed and rolled her eyes at the absurdity of the archaic rules.

A year or so later, when the mother of my good friend passed away, I wanted to attend the funeral. My Mum was upset by the idea. “But you’re a Cohen,” she said to me, “ —please don’t go.” I attended the prayer service—I stood in a separate section, away from everyone else—but, respecting my Mum’s request, I didn’t enter the cemetery for the burial.

Cohen is my family name from my father’s side. Cohanim—with lineage passed through males—are considered to be the descendants of the biblical Aaron, the first high priest (and the brother of Miriam and Moses). In ancient times, Cohanim performed the duties of the Temple, including overseeing holy sacrifies of animals and grains. In many Jewish communities today, these priests continue to hold a special status.

As a teenager, during high holiday services, I removed my shoes, I held out my hands to be washed with cool water, and, at the front of the synagogue with the other Cohanim, I stood beneath my talit—my white and black prayer shawl—with my arms and clean hands and fingers outstretched to transmit a blessing onto the congregation.

Because of this and other responsibilities, Cohanim must follow specific rules to remain spiritually pure. One emotionally difficult rule is the prohibition of a Cohen to enter a cemetery. The only exception to this is for a Cohen to attend the funeral of his own parent, sibling, child, or spouse.

On school trips, while my classmates toured cathedrals, because the buildings contained tombs, I waited outside. In my late teens, during visits to Jerusalem, when my friends visited Israel’s national cemetery on Mount Herzl, I stayed on the bus. And I didn’t attend my Grandma’s burial or the burials of my uncles or the burial of my friend’s mother.

As I grew older, I began to adhere to the Reform Jewish position on the status of Cohanim: Since biblical lineage is impossible to determine, and since the notion of Cohanim contradicts the value of egalitarianism, I let go of my priestly identity.

A few weeks ago, I called my Mum. I explained to her that I’d be traveling to Poland for my work. I would be visiting sites of Nazi concentration camps and extermination camps and mass graves and cemeteries. I am a Cohen, but I’m also a Holocaust educator. I have obligations. To witness. To explore and to ask questions. And to teach. My Mum understood why I wanted to break the rule.

Today, as I took my first steps into the centuries old Remuh Cemetery in Kraków’s Jewish quarter, I whispered to my colleague that this was my first time in a cemetery and I briefly explained why. The Remuh Cemetery had been practically destroyed by the Nazi occupiers, our guide told us. We were now looking at a field of rescued gravestones that had been placed somewhat haphazardly over mostly anonymous Jewish graves. Assuming correctly that I wouldn’t know much about the rituals of visiting Jewish cemeteries, my colleague explained to me that it was customary to wash one’s hands when leaving such a site, as a symbol of spiritual cleansing.

We wandered along the pathways between the graves. At the back of the cemetery, broken pieces of gravestones had been pieced together to form part of the cemetery’s wall—a monument to the dead, a metaphor for the Nazi destruction, a reflection of Holocaust survivors’ attempts to rebuild their lives, a symbol of the re-emergence of Jewish life in Europe.

In the afternoon, we visited the site of the Nazi concentration camp at Płaszów (pronounced Pwashouv). The Nazis murdered thousands at Płaszów, mostly with bullets, including Polish Christians and Clergy, Polish Jews, political opponents of Nazism, and a group of Hungarian Jewish women originally destined for Auschwitz-Birkenau. Destroyed by the Nazis at the end of the war, Płaszów is marked by a handful of monuments. But the site looks like—and seems to be used as—a public park. Our guide pointed out a grass-covered dip in the landscape right in front of us—an unmarked mass-grave. We watched parents stroll around the “park” with their children. We watched one couple sitting on the grass taking photographs of their baby.

Earlier, by the exit of Remuh Cemetery, I noticed the sink for ritual hand washing. But I didn’t use it. “I'll wash my hands when I leave Poland,” I said to my colleague. “Or maybe never.”