As an English teacher, I deeply value books and the written word. Books teach us about people and things we may not otherwise ever be able to encounter. Today, standing in the Strahov Monastery Library (an experience only possible with CWB), I was again reminded of this. There are some 280,000 books in the library, dating as far back as 860. Above the doorways, the monks curating the collection stored books they thought should be separated from the general collection due to their content.
In Salazburg a couple of days ago, we stopped to view and consider a memorial commemorating the 1938 book burning that occurred there. The Nazi party didn’t just place unwanted texts in a separate location, they destroyed the books in an attempt to stomp out all ideas with which they disagreed. The Hitler Youth collected all books with contradictory or unwanted opinions and ideas, and added them to a pyre in Residenzplatz, where the memorial now stands.
Teaching books and ideas – including the difficult and less popular topics – is paramount in ensuring history doesn’t repeat itself and our current generation progresses beyond the limitations and mistakes of prior ones. One topic we’ve discussed repeatedly during this seminar is that the Holocaust wasn’t the first time Jewish people were forcibly removed from their homes and communities. Nor was it even the second time.
In Vienna we discussed the 1st, 2nd, and 3rd communities, representing each time the Jewish community had to rebuild. Today, while on a walking tour of the Jewish Quarter in Prague, we learned an eerily similar history with only slightly varied details.
Without books and knowledge, we cannot possibly avoid the same pitfalls. While there isn’t time to read about every time a group of people has been persecuted, it is our responsibility as teachers to help our students understand that these horrible events haven’t happened just once. These things have happened repeatedly, and could certainly happen again if we aren’t aware. We have to teach our students about the past in order to protect the future.
As we teach about the past and the people who have been victimized, it’s important that we don’t just talk about numbers, but rather talk about names. We must name the individuals whose lives were deeply affected by prejudice and hatred. This seminar has and continues to expose me to names and stories I wouldn’t likely otherwise encounter.
We saw 77,000 names handwritten on the walls of Klausova Synagogue in Prague today. Each name represents an individual story cut short by the Holocaust. As teachers we cannot possibly tell 77,000 stories, much less the millions and millions of others represented in the many memorials we have visited this week. But we can start with one, and that one story will lead to others and others so that each story will be remembered and each name honored. Thus we can work towards a world defined by community and relationship instead of fear and prejudice.
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Alison M. Doyle-Hoover