Perhaps none of you still check this blog, but just in case, I wanted to update you on a few things. First of all, I saw "Valkyrie" last night and it was amazing! You should see it. I can't wait to see "Defiance" in a few weeks!!! Secondly, I just bought The Book Thief and I will let you know how I like it. Finally, unfortunately, I got the following email this morning from the Executive Director of my Tennessee Holocaust Commission Fellows Program. It is in regard to the story I read you all about the man and woman who supposedly met later in life and had been at the same camp, but on different sides. It has been proven to be fraud. Feel free to read below:
From Jodi:
I do not know if any of you have told this story your classroom-but sadly it has been exposed as a fake. It is hard enough to comprehend the Holocaust for its own historical event so it is very troubling when individuals embellish the experience.
http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gqrb4uMpbj8D7T-XHwX0ylu0Q-0AD95BQUR00
Anger, sadness over fabricated Holocaust story
By HILLEL ITALIE – 22 hours ago
NEW YORK (AP) — It's the latest story that touched, and betrayed, the world.
"Herman Rosenblat and his wife are the most gentle, loving, beautiful people," literary agent Andrea Hurst said Sunday, anguishing over why she, and so many others, were taken by Rosenblat's story of love born on opposite sides of a barbed-wire fence at a concentration camp.
"I question why I never questioned it. I believed it; it was an incredible, hope-filled story."
On Saturday, Berkley Books canceled Rosenblat's memoir, "Angel at the Fence." Rosenblat acknowledged that he and his wife did not meet, as they had said for years, at a sub-camp of Buchenwald, where she allegedly sneaked him apples and bread. The book was supposed to come out in February.
Rosenblat, 79, has been married to the former Roma Radzicky for 50 years, since meeting her on a blind date in New York. In a statement issued Saturday through his agent, he described himself as an advocate of love and tolerance who falsified his past to better spread his message.
"I wanted to bring happiness to people," said Rosenblat, who now lives in the Miami area. "I brought hope to a lot of people. My motivation was to make good in this world."
Rosenblat's believers included not only his agent and his publisher, but Oprah Winfrey, film producers, journalists, family members and strangers who ignored, or didn't know about, the warnings from scholars that his story didn't make sense.
Other Holocaust memoirists have devised greater fantasies. Misha Defonseca, author of "Misha: A Memoire of the Holocaust Years," pretended she was a Jewish girl who lived with wolves during the war, when she was actually a non-Jew who lived, without wolves, in Belgium.
Historical records prove Rosenblat was indeed at Buchenwald and other camps.
"How sad that he felt he had to embellish a life of surviving the Holocaust and of being married for half a century," said Holocaust scholar Michael Berenbaum.
The damage is broad. Publishing, the most trusting of industries, has again been burned by a memoir that fact-checking might have prevented. Berkley is an imprint of Penguin Group (USA), which in March pulled Margaret B. Jones' "Love and Consequences" after the author acknowledged she had invented her story of gang life in Los Angeles. Winfrey fell, as she did with James Frey, for a narrative of suffering and redemption better suited for television than for history.
The damage is deep. Scholars and other skeptics as well as fellow survivors fear that Rosenblat's fabrications will only encourage doubts about the Holocaust.
"I am very worried because many of us speak to thousands of student each year," says Sidney Finkel, a longtime friend of Rosenblat's and a fellow survivor. "We go before audiences. We tell them a story and now some people will question what I experienced."
"This was not Holocaust education but miseducation," Ken Waltzer, director of Jewish Studies at Michigan State University, said in a statement.
"Holocaust experience is not heartwarming, it is heart rending. All this shows something about the broad unwillingness in our culture to confront the difficult knowledge of the Holocaust," Waltzer said. "All the more important then to have real memoirs that tell of real experience in the camps."
Among the fooled, at least the partially fooled, was Berenbaum, former director of the United States Holocaust Research Institute at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington. Berenbaum had been asked to read the manuscript by film producer Harris Salomon, who still plans an adaptation of the book.
Berenbaum's tentative support — "Crazier things have happened," he told The Associated Press last fall — was cited by the publisher as it initially defended the book. Berenbaum now says he saw factual errors, including Rosenblat's description of Theresienstadt, the camp from which he was eventually liberated, but didn't think of challenging the love story.
"There's a limit to what I can verify, because I was not there," he says. "I can verify the general historical narrative, but in my research I rely upon the survivors to present the specifics of their existence with integrity. When they don't, they destroy so much and they ruin so much, and that's terrible."
"I was burned," he added. "And I have to read books more skeptically because I was burned."
Monday, December 29, 2008
Update to a Few Things
Posted by A. Davis at 7:57 AM 1 comments
Wednesday, December 10, 2008
The Long Goodbye
Well, it's nearly over! You all have been one of the more interesting classes I have had in English II Honors. I am usually very good at reading people and you all were quite difficult to read. Some days I thought we were all happy to be here, and some days I felt like you all hated me, the class, and the world at large! :) I will say that a strength of this class seemed to be projects and writing. Your creative projects were wonderful every time, and I think this is probably collectively the best group of writers to come through in a while. (Another strength was talking, though not in discussion, just to each other... :) ) I have enjoyed very much being your teacher this semester and I feel like, as with each class, you all are each leaving a little piece of yourselves with me. I think that you all handled being a large class pretty well, most of the time, and I do appreciate your patience at my being slow to return things at times. Grading 34 essay packets of 5 essays each does take a while! :) I am so glad that I did teach the Holocaust unit to you all because your responses were absolutely wonderful. I also have been totally impressed with some of the blog discussions you have had. I hope you are all taking something from this semester that you can use in your future and I wish you all the best and great successes to come. Don't be a stranger! I'll be in room 222, probably for the next 22 years, so come by and say hi sometime! (And you can always email me at adavis@clevelandschools.org anytime.) Remember my Holocaust Lit class next year or the next and my AP class your senior year! I would love to see you in class in the future!
By the way, the posting below is the one you will receive a blogging grade on, though any comments to this post are welcome!
Posted by A. Davis at 8:20 AM 9 comments
Analysis
Well guys, we have come to the end of the road. I would like to hear an evaluation from you as to which unit you enjoyed the most. Tell me what, specifically, made that unit your favorite and what you feel that you will carry into your educational future as well as your personal life applications from that particular unit. (I am going to have you do an extensive evaluation on the last day of class that will enable you to discuss the negatives as well as the positives. However, those are anonymous since they have a place for constructive criticism. This blog posting will cover only the positive, since you have to put your name on it.) I am anxious to hear your comments!
The units, in case you don't remember, are as follows:
All Quiet on the Western Front
The Inferno
History of the English Language
The Iliad
Julius Caesar
The Essay
The Holocaust (and Night)
Arthurian Legends
Vietnam Literature (The Things They Carried)
Debate
By the way, this is the posting you will receive a grade over. The next post by me is just to all of you. You are welcome to comment on it, but it will not be part of your grade.
Posted by A. Davis at 8:08 AM 25 comments
Thursday, December 4, 2008
The Warrior Returns
Although I do not love Anna Quindlen (do not even like her much, to be honest), I thought this was a very interesting article about mothers and war and poetry. Curious yet? I especially like the last poem. Let me know which poems you liked most and what you like about them!
Article
Posted by A. Davis at 6:38 AM 5 comments
Monday, December 1, 2008
The Wall
Memorials are important to honor the dead as well as to remind us, the living. We have talked about the lack of a World War I Memorial, the World War II Memorial, a little about various Holocaust Memorials, and now it is time to look at my favorite memorial, the Vietnam Wall Memorial in Washington, D.C. I have linked a site to this below. Go to this site, read about the Wall and how it came about, the designer, and look at the pictures. Then I want you to comment on your feelings about this memorial. What makes it a powerful memorial? If you don't like it (and many DO NOT), what do you feel is not appealing about it? What are your feelings about this memorial compared to others?
The Wall
Posted by A. Davis at 2:01 PM 26 comments
Week of December 1
We are on the home stretch, friends!!! Less than three weeks left! Our shortened Vietnam literature unit will happen this week. Also, please remember to take the Gateway VERY seriously on Wednesday. It is a seventh of your final grade!!! Here is what this next week holds for us in 1st period:
Monday, December 1
Hero notes
DUE: Extra credit Holocaust Project due
Tuesday, December 2
The Things They Carried
Vietnam history notes
Wednesday, December 3
Gateway
Thursday, December 4
The Things They Carried
Vietnam literature test
Friday, December 5
Library/Lab for Debate Research
DUE: Journals
Posted by A. Davis at 8:43 AM 0 comments