Teaching History Matters

Fall is here, and two weeks ago, I was lucky enough to be on stage with the director of the film for A Train Near Magdeburg to preview a snippet of the film and be a part of a panel of folks who are in the film. So on the 24th anniversary of 9.11, we sat on the stage of a community center near Columbus, Ohio to participate in a panel discussion in an evening of remembrance on a little-known pivotal moment in history.
To my right was a German girl who wasn’t even born in 2001. To my left was a Holocaust survivor was was on the train as a bewildered six year-old boy, a friend who has lived within sight of the Twin Towers for decades. On his left was a daughter of the WWII tank commander who I interviewed that summer of 2001, before those towers came down and the world seemed to stop. On the far right sat the director, a good friend now who I have been working with for the past decade.

All that morning beforehand I spoke to students, younger than the German girl—born long after 9.11.2001 into a ‘new world’—about my experiences surrounding events that took place on April 13, 1945, sixteen years before I myself was born. As I reflect—and process, really—on that evening now, two weeks on, a few thoughts are crystalizing in that wake of our national remembrance of 9.11.2001 and the political assassination that unfolded the day before—and the resulting tide of outrage and finger pointing which was threatening to tear our nation asunder anew by the time we took the stage. Literally as the killing was unfolding a thousand miles across the country, we were working with those young Americans in those classrooms, cultivating a sense of beauty, wonder, love, honor, inspiration, and resilience in our young people.

But that evening, we were there to speak to a moment in history when young men were faced with a choice—soldiers headed into a battle in which many would be killed—and chose compassion and humanitarianism, at great personal cost that in many cases would haunt them for decades thereafter. We were there to talk about a story that will unite Americans in a time of national division—no magic bullet to heal our woes, certainly, but a story of healing regardless. And it’s all true, it really happened, the result of many miracles that has resulted in tens of thousands of people being alive today, as documented by filmmaker Mike Edwards, who was the moderator for the evening.

And now Mike himself is being drawn into the vortex of the cosmic power of love transcending time and space, having reached out and gotten a response from the first family on the 2500-name survivor passenger manifest list—two and a half times the size of Oscar Schindler’s list—living in the Netherlands, who had no idea about this story. Mike’s in Europe and has visited that family in Amsterdam on this latest trip he is on.

It never ends, as I stated in the discussion. And that is a good thing. We want to Heal the World, in our own way…

[A link to the panel discussion video is below, containing also a short trailer for the film. (Warning: I talk a lot!) Photos not credited above and and video below courtesy of the City of New Albany, Ohio.]