November 6, 2013 “Telling Personal Stories From the Holocaust Makes History Come Alive” Jeremy Elias, The Atlantic Back in 1997, Gregory Peck honored Bob Dylan with the Kennedy Center Lifetime Achievement Award. In his short induction speech, Peck recalls a Fourth of July parade he watched as a child; Civil War veterans marched through the streets in his hometown of La Jolla, California. He goes on to compare Dylan to a 19th-century troubadour, “a maverick American spirit.” I’ve watched the video of Peck’s speech over and over. Peck’s brief, personal description of “Civil War veterans marching down the main street, kicking up the dust” in that small California town continues to amaze me. I’d forgotten these soldiers were real people, as silly as that might sound. But with Peck’s account of seeing them in the flesh, one of the greatest historical events in American history came to life. My reaction to Peck’s speech is not that different from the reactions I see when entering a high-school classroom, where I tell my grandfather’s story of surviving the Holocaust. Like many children and grandchildren of survivors, I face the lingering fear that when my grandparents are gone, so too will their stories. And that link between humanity and history will vanish. This fear, and its advancing timeline, led to my involvement with an organization called WEDU (short for We Educate), which brings grandchildren of Holocaust survivors into high schools across the New York area. The number of living survivors is dwindling. Their stories are now on the shoulders of the next two generations. theatlantic/education/archive/2013/11/telling-personal-stories-from-the-holocaust-makes-history-come-alive/281187/
Posted on: Fri, 08 Nov 2013 22:29:53 +0000
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