I have been a member of the Rotary Club for 12 years and feel good about all that the Rotary does for our world. Among all the needs in this world that Rotary gets involved in, education is in the forefront. Education not only helps young students optimize their own life, but it is also important for them to be among a set of our population capable of making rational decisions about political choices as well as to produce a well behaved public.
Lately, I have been invited to talk to students in Greenbriar, Clinton and Vilonia. For a long time I was suspicious that the bulk of our students in Arkansas are more interested in texting, sports and fun than education. This would be a poor model for our nation to remain in the lead of providing a model for a civilized country. After my last few talks in the neighborhood of our counties, I began to change my feelings and views of our students in our schools. Last week I was invited by Linda Knapp, (a Vilonia Middle school teacher), to talk to her school about my Holocaust experience of 75 years ago. The school offers a history class on the subject. When I got there, the students were already knowledgeable, informed and interested in hearing a talk given by a concentration camp inmate still alive after all the time that has elapsed since then. I got a warm reception by Linda Knapp, who then introduced me to the students. It has been my aim to tell the story but mix this with an educational message, an unusual mixture to combine education with the story of the Holocaust. I have written about the Holocaust in newspapers, published my memoirs and mentioned the strange combination of suffering and being educated at the same time.
We were incarcerated in the small burnt out Ukrainian town of Mogilev (of about ten thousand previous inhabitants). We were 150,000 deportees made to exist in the same space. Twenty of us were squeezed into a small room and we were lucky to have that. One of us twenty was a science high school teacher. Even if we doubted our survival and were intensely hungry, Professor Deutsch (they have the professor title in Europe), taught me math, physics and chemistry. It was a diversion from the harsh realities of every day. One day, he asked me to solve a geometry problem. I thought about it all night and found the solution. The next day Professor Deutsch told my grandfather (in Romanian camps, families were allowed to stay together). “If this kid survives the war, he should become a scientist or mathematician I did survive.” That comment by Professor Deutsch laid the seed in my heart for my future. I told the students that they too have a seed in their heart to guide them to their future; they owe it to themselves to discover it if they have not yet done so. In order to find that seed they must give every subject in school their best. To do that they must be good students and get good grades. Only if they thoroughly understand the subject taught can they decide whether they liked it or not. A poor student cannot evaluate the exciting content of any subject. There is a simple way to become an A rather than a C student. ‘Read the chapter that will be taught next ahead of time, mark down questions in the text not understood’; if the teacher then talks about it, the answer and explanation will sink in. Without the question the answer is meaningless. The homework is then done in much less time, the grades jump up and most important, the interest is greatly magnified. Suddenly the schoolwork becomes more important than texting, sports or any other fun activity.
The students were all ears and after the talk the girls hugged me, the boys gave me a warm handshake and my eyes teared. The students created a pretty butterfly with colorful glass pearls with their signatures on the back. Let the world be as innocent and beautiful as the butterfly and as sympathetic as the students, not as ugly as the Holocaust. Yes we do have wonderful teenagers and it so important to raise a generation of upright Americans.