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Yom HaShoah 2014.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 27, 2014|

Yom HaShoah is Holocaust Remembrance Day. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw ghetto uprising.

Clara Rudnick around age 15.

Clara Rudnick, center, around age 15.

I recently visited the local synagogue where my friend Clara Rudnick was to speak.   I was very gratified that several of my students also decided to come, and that when we arrived, they and I were also invited to participate in the readings and the candle lighting for the commemoration.

My wife and daughter also accompanied me. It was their first time in temple and the commemoration deeply touched them.

IMG_0006

Clara lit up when she saw the girls and I. She came right over, smothered me with a big hug, and went right over to the girls.

She and her twin brother Avreminkeh were about my daughter’s age, early teens, when the Germans arrived in Lithuania in June 1941. Her oldest brother Itze was 23 years old, and her two sisters Chiyeh and Dorkeh were 20 and 13. Her proud parents Yossel and Chiyena Charmatz were 42 and 40. They ran a highly regard restaurant and bakery that had been in business for generations, in a community of 10,000 that had had a Jewish presence since the 1300s. Forty percent of the prewar population of Sventzion was Jewish.

The townspeople turned on their neighbors. Even the Catholic and Orthodox churches collaborated in providing information needed to terrorize the community. In July, 1941, Lithuanian collaborators took a nearly a hundred teenage boys and young men including Itze outside of town, locked them in a building, and burned them alive. Hysteria rippled through the Jewish community now. In August, nearly a hundred more, including her twin brother, were taken outside of town on Shabbat, forced to dig their own graves and shot. A few weeks later, also on the Sabbath, eight thousand men women boys and girls were ordered to stand in the town square, where they were shot, including her mother and two sisters. Clara was saved only because her father had given her his coat and told her to hide in the local steam bath.

After the shooting, he came for her at night and took her to the forest for two nights without food and water. They found a farmer who was secretly a Jew and stayed until more refugees began to arrive. Deciding it was no longer safe, they

Students Chelsea R., Paige L., Meg V., Cheyenne B., Mary R. flank survivor Clara Rudnick at reception following Yom Hashoah commemoration, 2014.

Students Chelsea R., Paige L., Meg V., Cheyenne B., Mary R. flank survivor Clara Rudnick at reception following Yom Hashoah commemoration, 2014.

moved to the farm of a Christian friend who accepted their money to hide them. Later, they found themselves in the ghetto at Swir. ” I was 15 years old, I had lost my mother, brothers and sisters, and I was very upset.” And in a constant state of peril.

In the middle of February, 1942, the Germans came to liquidate the ghetto. Clara and her father managed to escape with others across a frozen lake as the Nazis shot at them. Her father broke through the ice and placed Clara in the freezing water and lay on top of her to protect her in the cold winter night, until the Germans left.

They traveled twenty kilometers to another ghetto at Mishaleikse, where they were arrested in April and sent to the Vilna Ghetto, subjected to hard labor. Here Clara witnessed starvation, disease, street executions, babies killed and placed in the back of trucks. Mistreatment was widespread and deportations to concentration camps and extermination centers occurred almost daily. Clara again was able to escape, but this time without her father. A local cinema owner told her father he would take care of her. She would see her father only one more time.

In the summer of 1942 (the same summer that Anne Frank would go into hiding, Clara notes) a handsome sum of gold was given to another Christian and Clara was hidden in a dark hidden cellar with a trap door for seven months, emerging only once a day to answer nature’s call. One day she peeped through the hatch to see what was going on upstairs, as there was a great deal of commotion and noise. Bullets raked the hiding spot and she was grazed in the stomach, the cinema owner killed. Clara was caught again.

She was taken before the Gestapo in Kalich, where as a slave laborer she was forced to make fur coats for the Germans fighting on the Russian front. Then the slaves were placed into two trucks. One went to the execution site of Panar, the other to the camp at Kaiserwald. Clara considers it another miracle that she was on the truck to Kaiserwald. Here she worked with dangerous acid to make batteries. She was afraid the acid would scar her and she would be killed.

After some time, she was sent to Stutthof on the Baltic. It was here that she saw her father, through the chain link fence, for the last time. He and 85,000 others perished here. She was terrified.

As the Red Army closed in she was marched out and placed in a barn, locked with other women to die from starvation. It was here that she was liberated by Soviet forces on march 11, 1945. She states, matter of factly, that the soldiers moved on immediately, having no time to care for them.

Heading to Lodz,  Poland shortly after, she did not find any family members anywhere. Regaining her strength, she met another survivor, Abraham Rudnick, a Lithuanian Jew like her who had been liberated by the Americans at Dachau on April 29, 1945. They married in a DP camp and emigrated to the United States in 1949, where they raised a family and built a plumbing and heating business in upstate New York.

So tonight she is here with her grandson and recounts the story, and the postscript of her summer trip back to Vilna and her hometown in Lithuania, and her realization that no one in Lithuania seems to want to acknowledge the countries complicity in the murder of her family and hundreds of thousands of others. But here, speaking in the temple for perhaps the last time, she has her North Country family, and has certainly won over the hearts of a few young ladies this evening. They wont forget, Clara, and they are the new witnesses. It’s so.

Clara told me some years ago that her sons had my dad as their history teacher in high school and that he was held in high regard. As we bid her goodbye, she whispered in my daughter’s ear-“Don’t tell your father, but I love him!” I am blessed to know you now, as was my dad and now my girl, and my students. We’ll keep you close, and remember your mother and father, your brothers and sisters, and all those murdered in those not so distant days.

Clara Rudnick by Erica Miller

 

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~THE TRANSPORT TO LIFE~ 69 Years On.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 13, 2014| 1 Comment »

 

Cover of After Action Report for April 1945.

Cover of After Action Report for April 1945.

Today is the 69th anniversary of the liberation of the train near Magdeburg. How fitting it was/is falling at Passover time.

Emails and greetings are flying back and forth through the liberator/survivor network that we created.  Liberator Frank Towers always sends a message on this anniversary to the survivors.

From my one of my survivor friends:

Hello to all of you ‘my twins’ on our 69th birthday and to those who fought to give back our lives. Like the years before, there are no words enough to express our thanks to them.

How appropriate is this year for us who celebrate Seder to read, as an addition to the Hagaddah, Frank Towers’ beautiful greetings remembering OUR liberation from not just slavery but certain death.

Here is the opening of my new article. You can see the rest in the previous post.

Blessings to all on this reflective occasion.

 

 

~THE TRANSPORT TO LIFE~

With the end of the war in sight, a startling encounter takes place between Jewish victims of the Holocaust and American combat troops who have survived nine months of grueling combat across Northern France, Belgium, Holland and now Germany. In 2001, interviews conducted by a high school history teacher and his class paved the way for several joyful reunions between the survivors and their American soldier liberators over sixty years later.

 

The photograph  is striking.

Query the word “train” and Holocaust” in an image search and the results returned generally show victims being deported to killing centers.

This is the opposite.Matthew Rozell

It is a cool spring morning. In the background, down the hill, are two cattle cars. At the opening of the sliding doors on one of the cars we can see a figure sitting on the edge, perhaps too weak to climb out yet soaking up some energy from the warming April sun. In front of him, a wisp of smoke seems to rise from a small makeshift fire that others have gathered around.

This is an appropriate backdrop for the drama unfolding in the foreground. Trudging up the hill toward the photographer, now only a few steps away, are a mother and her young daughter. The mother has her hair wrapped in a scarf and is clutching the hand of the girl with her right hand. Her left hand is extended outward as if in greeting; her face is turning into a half smile in a mixture of astonishment and enveloping joy, as if she is on the cusp of accepting the belief that she and her daughter have just been saved.

The little girl is shooting a sideways glance away from the camera. Her expression is one of distress- she looks terrified. On this morning in Germany in 1945, she may very well be responding to the two Sherman tanks that are now clanking up to the train, behind the photographer who is in the jeep with the white star.

Following the mother and daughter up the hill towards the soldiers are two other women. One welcomes the tanks with outstretched arms and a wide grin as she moves up the hill. The other follows behind her. She appears to be crying.

It is Friday, the 13th of April, 1945. Led by their major scouting in a jeep, Tanks 12 and 13 of the 743rd Tank Battalion of the U.S. Army have just liberated a train transport with thousands of sick and emaciated victims of the Holocaust. Major Clarence L. Benjamin snaps a photograph, which will be inserted into his official report back to headquarters.

But what have they stumbled upon? Where have these people come from?

And what do the soldiers do now?

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Prism.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , on April 8, 2014| 1 Comment »

PRISM SPR. 2014 I’ve had an article published in the Spring 2014 edition of PRISM: An Interdisciplinary Journal for Holocaust Educators, an “internationally renowned, annual, peer-reviewed journal” published by the Azrieli Graduate School of Jewish Education of Yeshiva University of New York, reaching readers in 35 countries and in all 50 American states. It is important to me to set the record straight and allow others the opportunity to read how this  history unfolded.

“In preserving and investigating the history, in interviewing liberators and Holocaust survivors, and in working with museums and memorial sites, Mr. Rozell and his students are also creating new knowledge, the highest form of academic achievement. Most importantly, in studying about the Holocaust, he and his students are also helping to rescue the evidence that can help stem the rising and dangerous tide of denial before it is too late.”

You can read the full edition here. The article appears on page 94. Obviously space did not allow for the full story to be told but that will come out in the book, so if it appears that a supporter, survivor or liberator friend has been left out, that is not the  real case. As always, thanks for your support, and thanks to editor Dr. Karen Shawn for recognizing the significance and the potential.

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Everybody had assumed that because the history books said it was destroyed, it was.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , on March 29, 2014|

This is Treblinka. I was at the scene of the crime in the summer of 2013, only 70 years later.

I was only there for at the most a couple of hours. But, as my friend Alan, who was there with me and 23 other fellow educators, says,“Treblinka manifests the Absence of Presence, the Presence of Absence. What’s there is not there, what’s not there is there.”

And with a little quiet, you can feel it.

But nature is giving up her secrets. You can’t murder 900,000 plus human beings and expect to be able to hide it completely. Walk these authentic sites. With a trained eye you can see it. I recognized it immediately on the grounds of Auschwitz. I was confronted with it brutally at Majdanek.

Major discovery 20 yrs ago.

Major discovery 20 yrs ago.

I have excavated sites of battles and military occupation that nature has hidden, before. Professionally, scientifically, and systematically. And sometimes that is the only way to corroborate information.  But you don’t just walk around with a spade. It takes years. And you have to know what you are doing, with love and dignity and respect.

That is why I would love to be able to help out here. My students and I have have worked to rescue the evidence of the greatest crime in the history of the world in our collecting of oral histories and filling out gaps in the narrative. But sometimes you have to dig- literally.

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First-Ever Excavation of Nazi Death Camp Treblinka Reveals Horrors
By Stephanie Pappas, Senior Writer | March 27, 2014 06:49pm ET

Archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls excavates at Treblinka. A documentary about the work airs on Saturday (March 29) on the Smithsonian Channel. Credit: Smithsonian Channel

Archaeologist Caroline Sturdy Colls excavates at Treblinka. A documentary about the work airs on Saturday (March 29) on the Smithsonian Channel.
Credit: Smithsonian Channel

The first-ever archaeological excavations at the Nazi death camp Treblinka have revealed new mass graves, as well as the first physical evidence that this camp held gas chambers, where thousands of Jews died.
Presented in a new documentary, “Treblinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine,” which will air Saturday (March 29) on the Smithsonian Channel, the excavations reveal that the Nazis weren’t as adept at covering up their crimes as they believed when they razed the death camp in 1943. Brick walls and foundations from the gas chambers remain, as do massive amounts of human bone, including fragments now eroding out on the forested ground surface.

“For me, that was quite shocking,” said project leader Caroline Sturdy Colls, a forensic archaeologist who normally works with police to find modern murder victims. “These artifacts are there, and these human remains are on the surface, and they’re not being recorded or recovered.” [Italics mine. This is what I saw.]
Treblinka’s horror
Of all the atrocities of Hitler’s Third Reich, Treblinka is one of the most mind-boggling. Historians estimate that about 900,000 Jews were murdered at this concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Poland over a mere 16 months.
The Nazis began deporting Jews, mostly from the ghettos of Warsaw and Radom, to Treblinka in July 1942. There were two camps. Treblinka I was a forced-labor camp where prisoners were made to manufacture gravel for the Nazi war effort. A little more than a mile (2 kilometers) away was Treblinka II, a horrendously efficient death camp.
Jews were sent to Treblinka II on trains, told they were simply going to a transit camp before being sent on to a new life in eastern Europe. The deception was elaborate: Nazis erected a fake train station in the remote spot, complete with false ticket-counter and clock.
“There was an orchestra set up near the reception area of the camp to play,” Colls told Live Science. “It was run by a famous composer at the time, Artur Gold.”Gold, a Jewish violinist from Warsaw, was kept alive at Treblinka both to entertain the Nazi guards and to run the orchestra. He died at the camp in 1943.
The Jewish deportees were split into two groups, one of men and the other of women and children, and ordered to undress for “delousing.” After handing over their valuables and documents, the victims were sent to the gas chambers, which were pumped full of exhaust from tank engines. Within about 20 minutes, some 5,000 people inside would be killed by carbon monoxide poisoning. Corpses were initially buried in mass graves, but later in 1942 and 1943, Jewish slave laborers were forced to reopen the graves and cremate the bodies on enormous pyres.
Hidden atrocities
But because the Nazis razed Treblinka’s death camp in 1943, little physical evidence of this genocide remained. What was known about Treblinka came from Nazi confessions and the eyewitness descriptions of very few survivors, most of whom were never allowed near the gas chambers.
But as an archaeologist, Colls knew that “the landscape could never be sanitized in that way,” she said. She began assessing Treblinka as an archaeological site in 2007. Her emphasis was on using “non-invasive” archaeological methods, including geophysical surveys of the site and visual inspection.
“What we wanted to do at that stage was to assess what, if anything, survived below ground,” Colls said.
Since that time, Colls has also led a lidar survey of the wooded site. Lidar is a method that uses lasers to measure the distance between the ground and the airplane-borne instrument. By scanning the ground with lidar, archaeologists can detect depressions and mounds that might indicate manmade structures. Lidar allows researchers to virtually strip away the vegetation that might obscure these features on the ground.
“What that revealed was the presence of previously unknown mass graves,” Colls said.
The suspected mass grave sites were in Treblinka I, the labor camp. The story of the labor camp is less well-known than the story of the death camp, which is now marked by a memorial. But the labor camp was no less brutal, Colls said: Eyewitnesses report seeing men hacked to death alive, and beatings and murder were commonplace. The largest of the mass graves as revealed on lidar was 63 feet by 58 feet in size (19.2 by 17.6 meters).
Indeed, when the archaeology team began digging to confirm the lidar results, they uncovered shoes, ammunition, and bones — including bones with cut marks indicating that the victims had been stabbed or otherwise assaulted.
After digging three small test trenches to confirm each mass grave, Colls and her team reburied the remains. Jewish rabbinical law prohibits the disruption of a gravesite, so the aim was never to disinter the bodies. But placing the bones back in the grave was emotionally difficult, Colls said.
“I think it never actually crossed my mind that it would actually be me who would re-inter the remains,” she said. “I think sometimes the hardest thing to do was to actually re-inter the remains, and to backfill the trenches over the gas chamber, for example, because it felt like you were almost putting a lid on it.”
Finding the gas chamber
The gas chamber was the subject of the teams’ second dig. There were two sets of gas chambers built at Treblinka, the first with a capacity of about 600 people, the second able to hold about 5,000.
Colls and her team conducted four excavations at Treblinka II. The first two revealed a strange find — a fossilized shark tooth, and sand. Evidently, the Nazis dumped sand from a nearby quarry over the remains of the death camp to disguise them.
The second two trenches, however, revealed a brick wall and foundation. The gas chambers were the only brick buildings in the camp, Colls said. The excavations also revealed orange tiles that matched eyewitness descriptions of the floor of the killing chambers. Chillingly, each tile was stamped with a Star of David, likely part of the Nazi subterfuge that the building was a Jewish-style bathhouse.
“Treblinka had never been looked at since the period after the war,” Colls said. “And everybody had assumed that because the history books said it was destroyed, it was.”
The excavations prove otherwise, she said. Colls is now working on an exhibition of the findings to go on display at Treblinka, as well as a book about the work. There are plans to go back and dig at an execution site near the labor camp to confirm the presence of a mass grave, she said, and there may be more work near the gas chambers.
The hope, Colls said, is to bring the atrocities to light, understand them, and hopefully prevent future genocides. To that end, she says, she channels the emotion of uncovering victims’ remains to finding more answers.
“For me, it feels like the Holocaust happened yesterday,” she said.
“Treblinka: Hitler’s Killing Machine” premiers Saturday, March 29 at 8pm ET/PT on the Smithsonian Channel.
http://www.livescience.com/44443-treblinka-archaeological-excavation.html

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“We often wonder, was it all worthwhile?”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , , on March 14, 2014|

Matthew Rozell, 30th Infantry Veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors at Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, March 2, 2012.

Matthew Rozell, 30th Infantry Veterans of WWII, Holocaust survivors at Mighty Eighth Air Force Museum, March 2, 2012.

Have you ever been to a reunion of folks who have been annually meeting one another, every year, for nearly 70 years?

Where the main participants had their youths forged in the steel of battle, and come together annually to remind themselves of what it was all about?

I have been honored and privileged to attend six such reunions with the veterans of the 30th Infantry Division of World War II.

To sit with these men, and their wives and family members and hear their stories, and chuckle as they josh with each other, or to shed a tear at the memorial service for the ones who were lost, is an incredible experience.

What has made it even more profound, over the last few years, has been the inclusion of the Holocaust survivors that they saved, and their extended families who would not be here today, if not for their efforts, at these gatherings. And add a Medal of Honor recipient, one of the few surviving from World War II, for good measure.

Worthwhile? I had a 94 year old veteran grab me by the arm a couple years back, and he said to me, after listening to me and the survivors of the Holocaust speak, “Now I know what I fought for.”

This year, the reunion is unfolding as I write this in Savannah, Georgia, with the gracious hosts Carol Thompson and Jack Sullivan and his wife Stella, the children of one of the soldiers who served in the 118th Artillery.  Unfortunately I am snowed in up north, digging out under 18 inches. I’ve included my greetings to the gathering below as they meet on the 69th anniversary of the end of World War II. Next year is the 70th and I really hope that they meet again and that I can be there. As the letter indicates, they helped to send me to Europe this summer as well. Here is a PDF of what I saw.

Matthew Rozell

February 14, 2014

AND HERE IS MY REUNION GREETINGS MESSAGE AND PICS

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The Story behind the Story, or, What a 12 year old girl did with 12 Years a Slave.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , , , , , , on March 4, 2014| 1 Comment »

12Years-a slave

The power of history speaks to us. In this post from November, I’m reminded of the force of narrative history and the twists and turns of the ever present “story behind the story”, that become so important to the story itself. In his Academy Award acceptance speech a few nights ago, director Steve McQueen acknowledged this when he thanked Dr. Sue Eakins, whom I noted, and wrote a short speech about, shortly after the film came out. It’s just an award, but maybe mainstream America will give a crap after all.

Heartening. Inspiring. What a twelve year old girl did with Twelve Years a Slave.

17 Nov. 2013

I have been thinking a lot lately about Solomon Northup and Twelve Years a Slave.

I always knew about him, as a kid I played and explored in the abandoned graveyard where his father is buried. He grew up on his family’s farm in Sandy Hill-today Hudson Falls- a couple stones throw’s away from my classroom, and roomed a few hundred feet in Fort Edward  from some of my greatest archaeological discoveries. All true. But until all the hype, can you believe that I had never read his book?

Fort Edward historian (and friend) Paul MCarty shows a damaged gravestone for Mintus Northup, father of Solomon Northup, who is buried in Fort Edward, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. The Northups lived in the Fort Edward area for many years. A new feature film portrays the freed slave's story from free man to slave and back to a free man. (Derek Pruitt - dpruitt@poststar.com)

Fort Edward historian (and friend) Paul MCarty shows a damaged gravestone for Mintus Northup, father of Solomon Northup, who is buried in Fort Edward, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. The Northups lived in the Fort Edward area for many years. A new feature film portrays the freed slave’s story from free man to slave and back to a free man. (Derek Pruitt – dpruitt@poststar.com)

So I searched it up, and discovered that it was a twelve year old girl in the 1920s who rediscovered this man and devoted the rest of her life to him, publishing a major work at age 88. It was her efforts that led to Solomon being re-discovered. I was so inspired that I wrote a speech on scholarship for our new National Honor Society members, borrowing heavily from her website.

My observations. Man’s capacity for evil never ceases to amaze….But also his capacity for goodness.

Read the book-his autobiography is just 99 cents. Get this version. For an additional 2 bucks Louis Gossett Jr will read it to you.

I saw the film 2 weeks after I completed the book. Overall thumbs up. No spoilers here, but the book has been verified. The film stays fairly true, though Henry Northup’s intense role in Solomon’s freedom maybe could have been spelled out clearer. Whether mainstream America gives crap is a fair question, but I’m fairly jacked up about it. Which means some students will be, too.

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~Scholarship~



In the mid-1920s, a 12-year-old girl in central Louisiana reached upon the library shelf of a plantation home and discovered a dusty copy of the book that would determine her life’s path. The autobiography that the future historian Dr. Sue Eakin became fascinated with also reverberates with us today, thanks to her drive.
Most of you know by now the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who lived in this area and who was kidnapped in 1841 and spent twelve years in captivity in the Deep South. When he was rescued, his supporters urged him to write his narrative to help reveals the horrors of slavery in the United States. The book was an immediate sensation, and along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, probably did much to hasten the coming of the American Civil War and the end of slavery. You may also know that Solomon’s father is buried in the Baker Cemetery in Hudson Falls. But did you know that his compelling narrative Twelve Years a Slave was essentially lost to history by the time of the early twentieth century, when it could not be located by libraries, stores or catalogs?

Sandy Hill. Today, Hudson Falls.

Sandy Hill. Today, Hudson Falls.


Growing up near the Louisiana plantation that Solomon was held at, Professor Eakin went on to write her master’s thesis about his story, and after decades of research, produced the first authenticated edition of the book in 1968. In 2007, at the age of 88, she completed her final definitive edition. Dr. Eakin also authored over a dozen other acclaimed history books and became an award-winning history professor, Hall of Fame journalist, civil rights leader and internationally recognized authority on antebellum plantation life.
After her passing at age 90 in 2009, her priceless historical archive was donated by her family to Louisiana State University. The Smithsonian Institute is creating a permanent exhibit featuring her Twelve Years a Slave research materials, and her family carries on her work.

In a sense, a twelve year old girl’s curiosity brought Twelve Years a Slave back to life, just as the American Civil Rights movement was dawning. May you too have the passion of the scholar, and cherish the importance of your vision and your work, and realize the impact that your actions may have on others.

http://twelveyearsaslave.org/

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Germany continues to grapple with Nazi-era legacy.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on January 13, 2014|

NOTE: Below is an article I found at the PBS website. In my trip to Germany this summer I encountered some of the same experiences. Happily I met many Germans who are actively making a difference. Compare this to nations like Lithuania.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  From the outside, it looks like a beautiful old estate, but this is no private residence. Inside, investigators for the German Federal Government are poring through decades old records, searching for the last remaining Nazi war criminals who might have escaped justice.

This is part of a much broader national effort underway in Germany to wrestle with the legacy of the holocaust… it includes the construction of memorials and museums at a record pace —  the revamping of the nation’s curriculum so that all German school kids get a fuller understanding of the Nazi era.

But perhaps few are as crucial to this effort as this man.  His name is Kurt Schrimm, and he runs the central office in Germany that’s still trying to bring former Nazis to justice.

 

KURT SCHRIMM: (translated from German) Right now only murder is punishable. All other crimes have passed the statute of limitations and can no longer be punished.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM: Thirty one years ago, Schrimm was a local public prosecutor investigating robberies, murders and gun crimes… but when this history buff heard of an opening in a regional office investigating war criminals, he jumped at the chance.  And soon after, a conversation with one Holocaust survivor drove home the importance of this work.

KURT SCHRIM: (translated from German) I met an elderly Jewish lady in New York at the end of the 1980’s who had survived the war. She said “I’ve been waiting more than 40 years for a German official to be interested in my case.” She told me “it doesn’t matter whether this person is put to trial or goes to prison; the most important thing is that you listened to my story.”

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:   Schrimm would like to see the men he’s investigating prosecuted… but establishing their guilt in court has been complicated….   Following World War II, to convict a German soldier of murder, prosecutors had to prove a direct, personal responsibility for the killing of an innocent person.

But several years ago, Germany successfully prosecuted 91 year-old retired Ohio autoworker John Demjanjuk with being an accessory to the murders committed while he was a guard at the Nazi’s Sobibor death camp.…and now Schrimm is hoping to use that legal precedent to prosecute dozens of others, including guards who worked at the Auschwitz-Birkenau camp.

To build their cases, they’ve not only talked to survivors… but drawing on the Nazis own meticulous records and maps of the camps, investigators try to determine if guards, or even low-level workers like cooks, knew about, or witnessed the genocide.

KURT SCHRIMM: (translated from German) For these cases we went to Auschwitz personally and looked at the whole camp and checked whether it was possible to see from the kitchen whether a new train of prisoners was arriving, or whether you could see the gas chambers.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:   After completing their investigation, Schrimm’s office has recommended that thirty former Auschwitz guards – men now in their late 80s and 90s – be prosecuted as accessories to murder.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Given that many of these men are in their mid to late 90s, and many of them may not even live to see a trial, let alone a prison cell, how much of this, do you believe, is symbolism, and how much of this justice being served?

KURT SCHRIM:  (translated from German) I think on one hand it’s important for the survivors, for the victims, that these cases are investigated. On the other hand, it’s also important for Germany. // Germany during the war committed such terrible crimes that, after the war, Germany had a terrible reputation.  So we try to improve that reputation by prosecuting these cases.

ERNST GRUBE: (translated from German) The current generation no longer has to confront what happened, so in my opinion, the Demianiuk trials, and these 30 or however many names that were found, they have a function to explain again to people what happened — the crimes of that period.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Ernst Grube is an 81 year-old Holocaust survivor. As a child growing up in Munich, he and his family lived right next to the old Jewish synagogue, which the Nazis destroyed… he and his family were eventually sent to a concentration camp.  (we sat down in Munich’s Jewish museum, directly across from the newly built synagogue.)

Grube says the priority today must be to understand the roots of those crimes, not just prosecuting the perpetrators of them.

WILLLIAM BRANGHAM: As somone who has witnessed these crimes firsthand, it seems you must have a very personal connection to these prosecutions?

ERNST GRUBE: (translated from German) Given that, apart from my parents, all our family was killed, it goes without saying that it‘s always a difficult moment for me, and the older I get, the more emotional the impact it has on me.  But it can’t be about that. // We want the words we say to help make sure these crimes don’t happen again.  The emphasis should be on the time running up to the war, and, of course, what’s happening today.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:   What’s happening today, is the rise of what Grube believes are frighteningly similar prejudices in German society – similar to what he experienced as a Jewish child seventy years ago.

According to the German government, there has been a rise in neo-Nazi crimes in Germany in recent years. Most of them targeted at germany’s growing immigrant population, including Turks and Roma immigrants, derisively called „gypsies“

In one of Germany’s most high profile cases – members of a neo-Nazi subgroup are currently on trial for ten racially motivated murders across the country.

Last year, German chancellor Angela Merkel felt the need to publicly apologize for these racist crimes, calling them her country’s “shame”

And later, Merkel visited the Dachau concentration camp– and again warned of the growing extremism in her country.

For his part, Ernst Grube counters that extremism by visiting classrooms, telling his story, and reminding students that there are echoes of the past all around.

ERNST GRUBE: (translated from German) So, what shapes my life today are my childhood experiences of being ostracized, being mocked for being a Jew, being isolated for being a Jew, being attacked for being a “gypsy”, as people said at the time this is something that must – and I believe can – be conveyed to young people. That is what drives me to be so active today.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  This ongoing remembrance of the Holocaust is hardly limited to the few remaining survivors of the war…

Germany has been putting up holocaust memorials, Nazi musuems and historical exhibitions in nearly all its major cities.  The nations’ schools are required to teach in depth lessons on the Nazi era to middle and high schoolers and almost all German students have visited a concentration camp or holocaust museum.

And the commemorations also come in more personal ways

WOLFRAM KASTNER:  I hope that it will never happen again, but if it would start again, it would start not anywhere but here.  In our mind, in our streets, in our city, in our village, in our school.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:  Wolfram Kastner is an artist in Munich – the city which Adolph Hitler called the capitol of the Nazi movement and one city that has often been criticized for down-playing its role in the rise of the third Reich.

While Munich saw the opening of the Jewish museum in 2007 and is currently building a major center on the history of Nazism, critics argue the city still doesn’t do nearly enough to acknowledge its past.

For example, at one of the city’s major landmarks — the Konigsplatz – there’s barely a sign that it was center stage for many of Hitler’s large Nazi rallies or that this was where Nazi youth had their notorious book burnings.

WOLFRAM KASTNER:  They want the city very clean for tourism.  To invite all people from all over the world to come to Munich to Oktoberfest, and it’s all nice and wonderful and pretty, and it’s so marvelous,  And the black marks, the dark points of the history are cleaned away.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:   among his many works, Kastern has defied authorities by burning black circles in the grass at Konigsplatz – a symbolic reminder of those book burnings seventy years ago.

Kastner’s current project has been to tell the stories of particular Jewish families who lived in Munich during the 1930s, and were sent to concentration camps by the nazis. To do so, he paints these suitcases – similar to the ones victims carried to the camps — and places them outside the very buildings where the families lived, along with a plaque telling their stories.

WOLFRAM KASTNER: There lived a family– Meyer.  And– they were killed.  Why?”   But if you see a girl, a face, a story, a history of her, It’s another feeling, and it– history comes near.

WILLIAM BRANGHAM:   In the end, Germany is doing what few nations have done before…. Not celebrating its greatest accomplishments, but building monuments to its darkest time.   …determined to keep history clearly in sight.

ERNST GRUBE:  I think nowadays, it’s about communicating how it even came to pass that such things could happen. What happened before Auschwitz, what happened before Buchenwald, what happened before Dachau, and after Dachau, after the concentration camp? So it’s about the question: “how could this happen?”, that’s one aspect. And the other is: “yes, ok, but what’s that got to do with me, today?

KURT SCHRIMM (translated from German) According to German law we are committed to prosecuting these cases —  it is true that because of their age they may never reach trial or go to prison, but  it is just and right that we go after these cases.

See the video here: http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/world/jan-june14/nazilegacy_01-12.html

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A higher calling.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , , on November 25, 2013| 1 Comment »

Great article and congrats to the lovely ladies, the promise of the future…. And regardless about how some may feel about teachers, or why they enter the field, I’ll stand by my words, below. My school, the State University of New York at Geneseo, contacted me for the closing comments. An honor.

And a calling.

Author James Patterson Creates Scholarship Program at SUNY Geneseo to Promote Literacy

Patterson Scholarship

Author James Patterson sent autographed copies of his latest children’s novel, “Treasure Hunters,” to the eight SUNY Geneseo students awarded James Patterson Teacher Education Scholarships this year, pictured here with the dean of the Ella Cline Shear School of Education. Front row (l to r): Marissa Liberati; Jessica Stoneham; Melissa Bellonte; and Kelsey Horan. Back row (l to r): Hannah Pettengill; Kristen Bondi; Dean Anjoo Sikka; Haley Hilgenberg; and Ashley Hark.

GENESEO, N.Y. – Best-selling author James Patterson has created a scholarship program at SUNY Geneseo’s Ella Cline Shear School of Education to support aspiring teachers in promoting the importance of literacy in education.

This year, eight graduate students earning a master’s degree in literacy received a $6,000 James Patterson Teacher Education Scholarship. Next year, the Patterson Family Foundation will award the scholarships to full-time incoming freshmen intending to seek teacher certification, with the possibility of renewal through graduation.

“I’ve been looking to bring these scholarships to more schools, and after studying a number of institutions and programs, I found Geneseo to be a great addition,” said Patterson, a highly popular mystery writer who also has written books for young readers. “My passion is to get more and more kids excited about reading, and training the next generation of great teachers is essential to that mission.”

All of the Geneseo scholarship recipients this year are from New York: Melissa Bellonte (Avon); Kristen Bondi (Dansville); Ashley Hark (Dalton); Hayley Hilgenberg (Falconer); Kelsey Horan (Endicott); Marissa Liberati (Manchester); Hannah Pettengill (Bloomfield); and Jessica Stoneham (Corfu). Hark, Hilgenberg, Horan, Liberati and Stoneham received their undergraduate degrees at Geneseo.

Patterson sent each scholarship recipient an autographed copy of his latest children’s novel, “Treasure Hunters,” and included a personalized note, stating that he was “thrilled that future teachers like you will help instill a lifelong love of reading in children.”

“We are very honored that James Patterson has included Geneseo in his literacy initiative,” said Anjoo Sikka, dean of the School of Education. “Exciting kids about books and reading is crucial to their success as readers, thinkers and keen observers and, ultimately, to become self-actualized and effective participants in our society. The scholarships will help us attract talented students with the kind of passion that drives Mr. Patterson. I sincerely commend him for his vision and am grateful for his contribution to the preparation of literacy teachers at SUNY Geneseo.”

Geneseo’s Patterson Scholarship recipients were selected on the basis of academic performance and an essay describing how they would apply what they have learned to help children develop a lifelong passion for reading. Applications were reviewed by a committee of faculty led by Susan Salmon, assistant professor and coordinator of graduate programs in the School of Education.

“Reading comes first,” said Liberati, who excelled both in and out of the classroom during her undergraduate years as a Geneseo student-athlete. “It is the compass by which we explore and map all other literacies – digital or not – and only by reading can we and our students become and continue to be lifelong learners.”

Liberati earned All-American honors in cross country and track and field. She also was on the NCAA Division III All-Academic Team in cross country in both 2009 and 2010.

“This scholarship is so much more than money to help me pay for my education,” said Hilgenberg, who completed her student teaching in Ghana, West Africa. “It shows that someone is rewarding my hard work and believing in my potential. It’s one of the greatest acts of kindness.”

Other recipients expressed similar sentiments about the power such scholarships have as a catalyst for success.

“As a future educator, I believe that it is not only my job to teach students how to read and write; it is my responsibility to teach them to love to read and write,” said Pettengill. “By opening a book, you can go on an adventure. Those small letters on the page take you to places you’ve never been and give you experiences you’ve never had.”

Patterson is among the most successful authors in history. He is the first to achieve 10 million ebook sales and has had more books ranked first on The New York Times best-seller list than any other author. He also is the current best-selling author in the young-adult and middle-grade categories and promotes reading through his website ReadKiddoRead.com.

SUNY Geneseo is firmly rooted in education, opening in 1871 as the Geneseo Normal and Training School. In 1948, the Geneseo Normal and Training School became a part of the State University of New York. The teachers colleges of SUNY became Colleges of Arts and Sciences in 1962, and two years later, Geneseo’s four-year degree programs in arts and sciences were implemented. SUNY Geneseo’s Department of Education was reorganized as a School of Education in 1992.

The School of Education today has 25 full-time and five part-time faculty members, who are preparing more than 700 students to be teachers. The school offers undergraduate programs leading to initial teacher certification in Early Childhood and Childhood, Childhood, Childhood with Special Education, and Adolescence Education. Graduate programs that could lead to professional certification are offered in Early Childhood and Childhood, Multicultural Childhood Education, Literacy (B-12) and Adolescence Education.

Among the school’s numerous success stories are the accomplishments of Geneseo alumnus Matthew A. Rozell, who teaches history at Hudson Falls (N.Y.) High School. He earned his master’s degree in education from Geneseo in 1988 after receiving a bachelor’s degree in history from the college. The Geneseo Alumni Association named Rozell Educator of the Year for 2013.

Rozell’s alumni educator award from Geneseo is among several honors he has earned during his career, including the prestigious National Society of the Daughters of the American Revolution Mary S. Lockwood Medal for Education. The medal honors outstanding achievement through service and leadership in promoting education outside the formal educational process. He also has been recognized as a leader in World War II and Holocaust history through several projects he initiated that have received national attention.

“Entering the teaching profession in many ways is to answer a higher calling,” said Rozell. “The Patterson Teacher Education Scholarships increase the options for our best and brightest to enter the field of teaching and represent a commitment to continuing to produce the caliber of teachers that Geneseo is renowned for. There is no higher mission.”

http://www.geneseo.edu/news_events/patterson-scholarship

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“They were everywhere.”

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , on November 20, 2013| 6 Comments »

I had dinner recently with some lovely people  were impressed by my work and filled with praise for the job I am doing with my students in preserving the past.

Near the end though, the conversation turned to some of the emigres after the war that these folks had known. One person insisted that the folks she knew who grew up in Germany during the war had had the “gun to their heads” if they did not join the Hitler Youth as children. “They had to do it, or they were dead.” And, by extrapolation, that Germans were forced at gunpoint to carry out the policies of the Third Reich.

I politely explained that that was most likely not the case, but in any event I was not at this gathering to pass judgment on their wartime behavior, especially if they were kids. But the myth persists, and I guess I kind of decided right then that I have to do more educational outreach on the topic. Why?

Because of what I saw this summer. Because I am realizing that I have been placed in a position to witness the testimony of what I have learned, and corroborated to be true. I guess I am coming to the realization that for a high school teacher I am pretty uniquely qualified, especially as the post survivor and post liberator soldier world dawns, to offer up first hand experiences with folks with whom I have shared a very special bond with.

Lots of teachers can count survivors who come to their classrooms as friends. But think of the bond when you are the person to actually introduce him, or her, to his or her actual liberators. The actual human being who freed them from physical captivity and probable death.

You tend to get close, and they tend to share- a lot- with you. Because they trust that you will preserve the word after they are gone. I guess the word is love. Not for their sake- but for the sake of humanity.

Like Levar Burton and his comments in the previous post, sometimes it’s just time to call bullshit.

March 1, 2013

The Holocaust Just Got More Shocking

By ERIC LICHTBLAU

THIRTEEN years ago, researchers at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum began the grim task of documenting all the ghettos, slave labor sites, concentration camps and killing factories that the Nazis set up throughout Europe.

What they have found so far has shocked even scholars steeped in the history of the Holocaust.

The researchers have cataloged some 42,500 Nazi ghettos and camps throughout Europe, spanning German-controlled areas from France to Russia and Germany itself, during Hitler’s reign of brutality from 1933 to 1945.

The figure is so staggering that even fellow Holocaust scholars had to make sure they had heard it correctly when the lead researchers previewed their findings at an academic forum in late January at the German Historical Institute in Washington.

“The numbers are so much higher than what we originally thought,” Hartmut Berghoff, director of the institute, said in an interview after learning of the new data.

“We knew before how horrible life in the camps and ghettos was,” he said, “but the numbers are unbelievable.”

The documented camps include not only “killing centers” but also thousands of forced labor camps, where prisoners manufactured war supplies; prisoner-of-war camps; sites euphemistically named “care” centers, where pregnant women were forced to have abortions or their babies were killed after birth; and brothels, where women were coerced into having sex with German military personnel.

Auschwitz and a handful of other concentration camps have come to symbolize the Nazi killing machine in the public consciousness. Likewise, the Nazi system for imprisoning Jewish families in hometown ghettos has become associated with a single site — the Warsaw Ghetto, famous for the 1943 uprising. But these sites, infamous though they are, represent only a minuscule fraction of the entire German network, the new research makes painfully clear.

The maps the researchers have created to identify the camps and ghettos turn wide sections of wartime Europe into black clusters of death, torture and slavery — centered in Germany and Poland, but reaching in all directions.

The lead editors on the project, Geoffrey Megargee and Martin Dean, estimate that 15 million to 20 million people died or were imprisoned in the sites that they have identified as part of a multivolume encyclopedia. (The Holocaust museum has published the first two, with five more planned by 2025.)

The existence of many individual camps and ghettos was previously known only on a fragmented, region-by-region basis. But the researchers, using data from some 400 contributors, have been documenting the entire scale for the first time, studying where they were located, how they were run, and what their purpose was.

The brutal experience of Henry Greenbaum, an 84-year-old Holocaust survivor who lives outside Washington, typifies the wide range of Nazi sites.

When Mr. Greenbaum, a volunteer at the Holocaust museum, tells visitors today about his wartime odyssey, listeners inevitably focus on his confinement of months at Auschwitz, the most notorious of all the camps.

But the images of the other camps where the Nazis imprisoned him are ingrained in his memory as deeply as the concentration camp number — A188991 — tattooed on his left forearm.

In an interview, he ticked off the locations in rapid fire, the details still vivid.

First came the Starachowice ghetto in his hometown in Poland, where the Germans herded his family and other local Jews in 1940, when he was just 12.

Next came a slave labor camp with six-foot-high fences outside the town, where he and a sister were moved while the rest of the family was sent to die at Treblinka. After his regular work shift at a factory, the Germans would force him and other prisoners to dig trenches that were used for dumping the bodies of victims. He was sent to Auschwitz, then removed to work at a chemical manufacturing plant in Poland known as Buna Monowitz, where he and some 50 other prisoners who had been held at the main camp at Auschwitz were taken to manufacture rubber and synthetic oil. And last was another slave labor camp at Flossenbürg, near the Czech border, where food was so scarce that the weight on his 5-foot-8-inch frame fell away to less than 100 pounds.

By the age of 17, Mr. Greenbaum had been enslaved in five camps in five years, and was on his way to a sixth, when American soldiers freed him in 1945. “Nobody even knows about these places,” Mr. Greenbaum said. “Everything should be documented. That’s very important. We try to tell the youngsters so that they know, and they’ll remember.”

The research could have legal implications as well by helping a small number of survivors document their continuing claims over unpaid insurance policies, looted property, seized land and other financial matters.

“HOW many claims have been rejected because the victims were in a camp that we didn’t even know about?” asked Sam Dubbin, a Florida lawyer who represents a group of survivors who are seeking to bring claims against European insurance companies.

Dr. Megargee, the lead researcher, said the project was changing the understanding among Holocaust scholars of how the camps and ghettos evolved.

As early as 1933, at the start of Hitler’s reign, the Third Reich established about 110 camps specifically designed to imprison some 10,000 political opponents and others, the researchers found. As Germany invaded and began occupying European neighbors, the use of camps and ghettos was expanded to confine and sometimes kill not only Jews but also homosexuals, Gypsies, Poles, Russians and many other ethnic groups in Eastern Europe. The camps and ghettos varied enormously in their mission, organization and size, depending on the Nazis’ needs, the researchers have found.

The biggest site identified is the infamous Warsaw Ghetto, which held about 500,000 people at its height. But as few as a dozen prisoners worked at one of the smallest camps, the München-Schwabing site in Germany. Small groups of prisoners were sent there from the Dachau concentration camp under armed guard. They were reportedly whipped and ordered to do manual labor at the home of a fervent Nazi patron known as “Sister Pia,” cleaning her house, tending her garden and even building children’s toys for her.

When the research began in 2000, Dr. Megargee said he expected to find perhaps 7,000 Nazi camps and ghettos, based on postwar estimates. But the numbers kept climbing — first to 11,500, then 20,000, then 30,000, and now 42,500.

The numbers astound: 30,000 slave labor camps; 1,150 Jewish ghettos; 980 concentration camps; 1,000 prisoner-of-war camps; 500 brothels filled with sex slaves; and thousands of other camps used for euthanizing the elderly and infirm, performing forced abortions, “Germanizing” prisoners or transporting victims to killing centers.

In Berlin alone, researchers have documented some 3,000 camps and so-called Jew houses, while Hamburg held 1,300 sites.

Dr. Dean, a co-researcher, said the findings left no doubt in his mind that many German citizens, despite the frequent claims of ignorance after the war, must have known about the widespread existence of the Nazi camps at the time.

“You literally could not go anywhere in Germany without running into forced labor camps, P.O.W. camps, concentration camps,” he said. “They were everywhere.”

Eric Lichtblau is a reporter for The New York Times in Washington and a visiting fellow at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

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Solomon Northup and Twelve Years a Slave.

Posted in Uncategorized, tagged , , , , on November 17, 2013| 3 Comments »

TWELVE YEARS A SLAVEI have been thinking a lot lately about Solomon Northup and Twelve Years a Slave.

I always knew about him, as a kid I played and explored in the abandoned graveyard where his father is buried. He grew up on his family’s farm in Sandy Hill-today Hudson Falls- a couple stones throw’s away from my classroom, and roomed a few hundred feet in Fort Edward  from some of my greatest archaeological discoveries. All true. But until all the hype, can you believe that I had never read his book?

Fort Edward historian (and friend) Paul MCarty shows a damaged gravestone for Mintus Northup, father of Solomon Northup, who is buried in Fort Edward, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. The Northups lived in the Fort Edward area for many years. A new feature film portrays the freed slave's story from free man to slave and back to a free man. (Derek Pruitt - dpruitt@poststar.com)

Fort Edward historian (and friend) Paul MCarty shows a damaged gravestone for Mintus Northup, father of Solomon Northup, who is buried in Fort Edward, on Monday, Oct. 14, 2013. The Northups lived in the Fort Edward area for many years. A new feature film portrays the freed slave’s story from free man to slave and back to a free man. (Derek Pruitt – dpruitt@poststar.com)

So I searched it up, and discovered that it was a twelve year old girl in the 1920s who rediscovered this man and devoted the rest of her life to him, publishing a major work at age 88. It was her efforts that led to Solomon being re-discovered. I was so inspired that I wrote a speech on scholarship for our new National Honor Society members, borrowing heavily from her website.

My observations. Man’s capacity for evil never ceases to amaze….But also his capacity for goodness.

Read the book-his autobiography is just 99 cents. Get this version. For an additional 2 bucks Louis Gossett Jr will read it to you.

I saw the film 2 weeks after I completed the book. Overall thumbs up. No spoilers here, but the book has been verified. The film stays fairly true, though Henry Northup’s intense role in Solomon’s freedom maybe could have been spelled out clearer. Whether mainstream America gives crap is a fair question, but I’m fairly jacked up about it. Which means some students will be, too.

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~Scholarship~



In the mid-1920s, a 12-year-old girl in central Louisiana reached upon the library shelf of a plantation home and discovered a dusty copy of the book that would determine her life’s path. The autobiography that the future historian Dr. Sue Eakin became fascinated with also reverberates with us today, thanks to her drive.
Most of you know by now the story of Solomon Northup, a free black man who lived in this area and who was kidnapped in 1841 and spent twelve years in captivity in the Deep South. When he was rescued, his supporters urged him to write his narrative to help reveals the horrors of slavery in the United States. The book was an immediate sensation, and along with Uncle Tom’s Cabin, probably did much to hasten the coming of the American Civil War and the end of slavery. You may also know that Solomon’s father is buried in the Baker Cemetery in Hudson Falls. But did you know that his compelling narrative Twelve Years a Slave was essentially lost to history by the time of the early twentieth century, when it could not be located by libraries, stores or catalogs?

Sandy Hill. Today, Hudson Falls.

Sandy Hill. Today, Hudson Falls.


Growing up near the Louisiana plantation that Solomon was held at, Professor Eakin went on to write her master’s thesis about his story, and after decades of research, produced the first authenticated edition of the book in 1968. In 2007, at the age of 88, she completed her final definitive edition. Dr. Eakin also authored over a dozen other acclaimed history books and became an award-winning history professor, Hall of Fame journalist, civil rights leader and internationally recognized authority on antebellum plantation life.
After her passing at age 90 in 2009, her priceless historical archive was donated by her family to Louisiana State University. The Smithsonian Institute is creating a permanent exhibit featuring her Twelve Years a Slave research materials, and her family carries on her work.

In a sense, a twelve year old girl’s curiosity brought Twelve Years a Slave back to life, just as the American Civil Rights movement was dawning. May you too have the passion of the scholar, and cherish the importance of your vision and your work, and realize the impact that your actions may have on others.

http://twelveyearsaslave.org/

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Also a great recent interview from New York Magazine, with Levar Burton, the kid who got his break in Roots, back when I was in high school. I highlighted part of what he said. I think it relates to my philosophy on the teaching of the Holocaust as well.

You got your big break when you were cast in Roots as Kunta Kinte, a West African man who is captured and brought to America as a slave. During production, was there a sense that Roots was more than just a television mini-series?
You have to remember we’re looking back through the lens of a 19-year-old. I had never faced any of the challenges the veterans—the Cicely Tysons, the Lou ­Gossetts—had in terms of finding work. But what I was aware of was that all of the veterans thought that this material was special. All of them were very clear that telling the story of slavery in America through the eyes of the African had never been done before. It wasn’t Gone With the Wind. It wasn’t just glossing over the human costs. Roots wasn’t just art for art’s sake. It was art as a way of moving the ­culture forward.

And do you think Roots did that?
I like to think so. Roots became a part of the fabric of American culture. After Roots, we all had a similar frame of reference and context for what we talk about when we talk about slavery in America. You have to acknowledge that there’s a wound before it can even begin to get better.

You’ve spoken of a “post-Roots disappointment,” that the series didn’t actually change Holly­wood and that this galvanizing cultural moment didn’t fully pan out. After all, if most Americans watched parts of Roots, it meant that civil-rights leaders were tuning in alongside avowed ­racists—
Who were watching Roots and having a profound human experience of identification and compassion that was probably new. And then you have the rubber-band effect of those record numbers of viewership snapping back to red and blue, right? That has been ultimately the path of least resistance to retrench and go back to old ways of thinking rather than to roll up our sleeves and do the hard work.

And you see us as retrenched now?
Look at the rubber-band effect from the night of the inauguration of Barack Obama to today. There was this enormous sense of finally. Well, finally what? Finally, we have a black man in the White House who at least on some level has an understanding of the black experience in America. But that in no way makes this a post-racial society.

And now we have 12 Years a Slave. Critics have called it a breakthrough for showing the brutality of slavery and for finally vanquishing the myth of Gone With the Wind. But Roots was supposed to have done that. What have we been doing for the past 36 years?
That’s a very good question, and I wish I had an answer for you. But I don’t. We would love to forget, I think. We would love to go back to the fairy tale, to the fantasy of Tara. But it’s too easy to try and erase the sins of the past and claim, “That wasn’t me.” We are all capable of unspeakable horror. We are all capable of unthinkable brutality. We have to be ever vigilant and continue to remind ourselves of our propensity for monstrosity. And there’s a lot of resistance to revisiting this issue. I’ve heard disquieting chatter on both sides of the color line. Why do we have to revisit this again? Well, we have to revisit this again because all of us have forgotten!

12 Years will never have the viewership of Roots. Do you think it’ll still have some impact?
Steve McQueen is a brilliant storyteller, and he’s taken a very difficult subject and told it in a very accessible, however difficult, way. Now, I wish more people were going to see it. It’s going to play really well in New York and L.A. and some other cities, and I hope that it plays incredibly well overseas as well. It’ll be interesting if anybody is bothered to book a theater in certain locales—certain territories, as they say.

What did you think of the last slavery film to have a big cultural footprint, Django Unchained? Quentin Tarantino argued it was one of the few slave movies about black empowerment.
[Chuckles] Yeah, well …

Do I sense skepticism in your voice?
[More chuckles] Yes. Django Unchained is a fantasy, let’s be clear. And when Quentin Tarantino says that Django is more real than Roots, I call bullshit. I got nothing against him, but don’t go there, okay? Don’t go there, Quentin. Too many people who look like me bled and died for you to have the opportunity to satirize the slave narrative. There’s a place for satire in culture. Taken at face value, as a piece of satire, I went and enjoyed it. It was fun. Let’s just not get it twisted. Django was not real.

In another 36 years, are we going to be discussing another brutal slavery film that critics hail as finally vanquishing the myth of Gone With the Wind?
At the screening of 12 Years a Slave, no less a personage than Russell Simmons told me that Roots was being remade. And my initial reaction was, Why? But, look, the bottom line for me is if one soul is moved irrevocably toward the side of humanity, then it’s worth it. Human beings are the laziest creatures in the history of creation. We would rather not do anything if we could avoid it. But social justice requires rolling up your sleeves and getting your hands dirty. And I think moments like Roots and 12 Years a Slave are opportunities for art as a cultural force to step forward and lead the way. What we do with it is up to us.

http://nymag.com/news/frank-rich/roots-levar-burton-2013-11/

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