My latest project

I'm exhausted from what has to be on record the most stimulating week of teaching in my life. Here's a snapshot of the latest thing keeping me from updating this as I should. Since my brilliant mom helped me to arrange the visit in conjunction with our class's reading of Elie Wiesel's Night, I will be delivering these introductory remarks in front of the entire school tomorrow during two different assemblies in our school theater. People in the area are welcome to come partake of this unique opportunity: 10-12 at Godinez High School in Santa Ana.

I’m going to keep my introductory remarks brief because time is short and I don’t want to sacrifice a second of our time with Mr. Dzieza this morning. We are truly so lucky to have this opportunity—an opportunity that will most likely not be available to your children, as Mr. Dzieza pointed out to me on the phone. For that, we would like to thank Mr. Dzieza from the bottom of our hearts.

Sol Dzieza was transported from his childhood home in Poland at the age of fourteen and survived six Nazi concentration camps before his liberation at the age of nineteen. He moved from Sweden to America in 1946, where he raised two sons. Mr. Dzieza was recently awarded the George Washington Honor Medal for his help in educating young children. As he speaks with you today, he carries on that important mission. We know that the precious gift he is giving in speaking to you today will affect you in the same way it affected his grandson, who wrote the following in a personal memoir published on the US Holocaust Memorial’s website:

I had always been aware that my grandfather was different from those of my friends, his halting accent, the numbers tattooed on his arm for example. But it wasn't until I was 13, when he thought I was ready, that I truly understood his story.

I thought I knew about the Holocaust. I knew the numbers of those killed: six million Jews; 200,000 Gypsies; hundreds of thousands who were disabled, homosexual, Jehovah's Witnesses, and so on.' I tried to comprehend the enormity by comparisons: three-quarters the population of New York, 260 times the population of my hometown, 266,666 times my 6th grade class. But they remained statistics. It wasn't until my grandfather's talks that these cold, neat, ledgers and columns grew faces, families, and lives.