November 17

Social Justice Speaker: Rose Gibson

Rose Gibson spoke of her experiences and concerns she has for the Palo Alto area. She believes there is a rising concern about gun violence in this area. I share the same concern with Rose, and I believe there needs to be something done to keep young people and gangs away from guns. As a country, we need to change gun laws for the safety of people. Guns have fallen into the hands of the wrong people, such as gang members and terrorists. I believe and protect our right to bear arms, but for someone being allowed to buy an assault weapon for mass death, or able to get into the hands of people without a background check is what causes people to get hurt. Rose voices her opinion on gang violence among the youth. To reduce the numbers of gang violence, the area of Palo Alto should provide community engagement activities, or cheap activities for people to participate in. This can keep the youth out of trouble, as long as they have a healthy and safe alternative participate in.

Rose pushes for this correctional institution. I think its a great idea to help inmates prepare to find their place back in the world when they finish their sentence. This could potentially reduce homelessness since inmates are trained and educated they could more likely find a job after jail.

I liked her comment on the presidential race. She said she was disappointed, but she also told us to not give up hope, and to acknowledge that we still have our duty to stay active in politics and making decisions happen in our country. 

Death Penalty

My views on the death penalty can lean back and fourth if I support it or not.

I think that murderous criminals that think they have the power to take away someones life and rights from this world should have the same actions reflected upon them. If the criminal was a mass murderer i think the Penalty would suit their punishment. Its not okay for someone to think and act upon taking away someones life. Everyone has the right to live a happy life in America, and for someone t take that right away from a living person is wrong. The penalty should be used for extreme cases that the state knows for sure that the criminal is guilty

I also think that a criminal living their whole life in jail to think about what they did is a prolonged, well deserved punishment. For someone to live all their life in solitary or locked up, not to see the outside world again and to have plenty of time to think about what they have done is torture for the mind. Also, if we were to wrongfully convict a criminal and he was innocent but sent to the death penalty then that would cause major problems.

In some degree with certain circumstance, the Penalty might be suitable to extreme cases, but also letting the criminal suffer and live the rest of their life in jail is also suitable for most cases. Its a back and fourth judgement

Rescuers- Agnieszka Budna-Widerschal story reflection (page 175-179)

The story of a woman named Agnieszka was very disturbing to me. She seemed to me like any other rescuer in the time of the Holocaust. She was hiding a jewish family and others in her attic of her apartment. This was very risky since her "nosy neighbors" were living on the second and first floor. She took out their waste at night and brought them water when her neighbors were sleeping so no one would notice or become suspicious. She had to make up plenty of lies and stories in her confrontations with the Nazis. Im surprised that she managed to keep them straight and that she was still able to remain un-compromised.

What was ultimately disturbing to me in her story is that hate and anti-semitism that was still arising after the war. She describes a moment at the market, a woman confronts her and says "Only jews have money to by food. Look at what you can buy; I can't buy nearly that much." She replied a very sarcastic and rude comment. Its really shocking to me that people were still categorizing people based on the stereotype of "money". It was so hateful and discriminatory. Her tragic moment of hate was when her own daughter was murdered by polish kids. Agnieszka tells the interviewer that he daughter did not come home from school on day, and a conductor at the train station saw the polish children put Agnieszka's daughter Bella in front of an oncoming train. Even at the funeral, the mother of the children at the train station says "You know, its a good thing that our children are alive." As if Bella'd death did not matter to her.

It's appalling the amount of hate people had towards another human being in this time of the world. Its still appalling to me know that hate still continues as people discriminate against each other in our own country today, as if we can not learn from the Holocaust and what the hate did to the people in that time period.

Rescuers-Marc Donadille story entry (page 114-117)

Marc Donadille was a protestant minister in the Cevennes district of France during the time of the Holocaust. He as a protestant had a strong belief that "it was inadmissible to persecute people because of their race or religion. He became aware of the anti-semitism in Germany as he studied in Geneva. He started working with CIMADE which was an organization working on helping save the Jewish people. He picked up up Jews from camps and hid them in the churches and farms in Cevennes and villages in Le Chambon.

What was interesting to me as I read this mans story was that there were rescue houses along the way to safety for people to stop and rest, eat, sleep and feel safe for a night. I did not know that people offered their homes like this. I think this was a really easy and helpful way to be involved in saving the Jews without really doing something bigger or too risky like hiding them away for months.

Marc also made fake I.D papers for Jewish refugees. He was carefully watched by policemen but never arrested for helping the jews. He discuses that getting caught never haunted him or worried him. I believe he wasn't worried because in his heart he knew he was doing the right thing and helping hundreds of people save their lives.

Another thing I found interesting and also a little humorous was the naive people that Marc encountered while helping the jews. He describes a time on a train, someone was talking about a pastor who was hiding jews in Cevennes. Marc simply replies, "You shouldn't say that. That pastor can get in trouble for that." The man not knowing that he was talking to the pastor himself very annoyingly reply "You can get in trouble for that?"

This was a tad humorous and unbelievable to me that someone could be so blind to what was going on in the world at the time of the Holocaust. Was he even thinking about saving the jews? or was he just oblivious to what was happening to Jews and caught rescuers.

USC Visual History Archive

In my session on the Visual History Archive I was interested in looking at Holocaust survivors. Here are steps to get to my interview in the Archive. My overall experience with the Archive was positive, it was easy to access and I could easily find what I was looking for.

• I visited https://sfi.usc.edu/vha
• I started my search in 'Experience groups
• Under 'European Holocaust' I chose 'Jewish Survivors'
• Under 'Interview Information' I changed the language of the interview to 'English'
• Press 'Next' and a list of interviews are displayed
• I chose 'Frieda Aaron' 

I focused on segments 52-62 in the interview

In these parts of the interview, Frieda was describing the conditions of Warsaw ghettos in Poland that she was living in at the time of the Holocaust. As people were coming into the ghettos to find shelters, she explains that there weren't many cars for people to use. People had to drag, carry, or pull their possessions in a wagon into the ghettos. The ghettos were small and crowded with people. The winters were cold and harsh, and the people did not have a lot of food due to overcrowding. People who could not stay in the ghettos as guests were left to live in the streets during the winter. Freida describes the bodies lying all over the streets due to the cold and starvation. They would have to step over them has the walked because they were not moved for a while. When they were moved, a big truck gathered them and took them to the cemetery. Frieda describes her and her families hiding place in a closet. The closet was covered with a large piece of furniture to make it look like to people that there was no other room besides the one they were in. She then goes on to describe an event where and 8 year old boy was discovered with his family. He was spared, but forced to watch his family (father and mother) shot and killed in the street. 

Her stories of the dead in the streets and the shooting of the 8 year olds family was incredibly disturbing. It breaks my heart to hear that someone had to witness all of this and go through this struggle. The way these people were treated was inhumane, and they should have been helped instead  of left in the street to die.

I attended an event where the film Besa: The Promise was being played on Thursday 9/22/2016

This film was about a man named Normon Gershman who started his film journey by interviewing some people that were known to have had rescued Jews during the time of the Holocaust and World War Two.

Norman's interviewee was a man from Albania who's family was known for sheltering a jewish family during the Holocaust. His father allowed a small boy to live with them and take him essentially adopt him into the family. Once the family left, they had left being three books in the family's house in Albania. The promise made in the family is that thesis books were to be returned to the Jewish family one day in the future.

This takes Normon and his Jewish rescuer to Islam where they tracked down the young Jewish boy that once lived in Albania with his family. They met up with each other and talked about how he and his family were so thankful to be living with the rescuers at the time.

The meeting was very emotional, the Jewish boy, who was now an elder man, explained how he never liked to talk of what happened back during World War Two. He didn't even tell his own son the tragedy of this time period.

This spoke a thousand words to me, seeing the pain in his face as the subject of the Holocaust was drawn back to his memory. It was like he was coming out of dark place in his past.

When the Jewish rescuer produced the three books to the elder man, he looked confused at first. He then opened it and saw that the books belonged to his family and that they were really all that he had left of them. He let out a bunch of tears and apologized because he never cries.

The meeting was concluded with a long hug

This journey of returning the books was almost like closing the wounds of the past. The Rescuer felt that the books didn't belong there in Albania with him anymore. By returning them to the elder man, it almost like a symbol of his parents that are now gone. This made me think of how many Jewish survivors went through this for the rest of their lives, not knowing when to let go or how to stop thinking about the terrible things that happened. How even talking about it or thinking about it still brings tears to their eyes. This film really opened up to me and showed that people still go through this pain everyday. It makes me sad that we couldn't do more for them, to help them during this tragedy.

Man's Search for Meaning Part 1

Reading Man's Search for meaning was disturbing, and gave me a haunting image. The use of words in the book have a total different meaning to them than what we would think when they came to mind. Words that were used just as shoes, hair, Capo and cigarettes have such a cruel and inhumane story behind them to the jewish prisoners involved in the Holocaust. 

Shoes were given to the prisoners when they arrived to the camps along with a work suit. Most of the time the shoes would not fit the men's feet and this would cause them to swell. This would force the men to go barefoot throughout work days and cause frostbite during the winter. 

When showering, shoes were often taken by other prisoners that needed that size. Some prisoners were left with the wrong size, or two right foot shoes or two left foot shoes.

Hair was literally taken from them when the jews were admitted into the work camps. In one way you can see it as taking away someone's identity. Also when the jews were outing camps, they were tattooed with a number on their arm as if they were a piece of property to keep track of. Almost like branding a cow.

Men also had to shave their beards every day to look younger. They did this so they looked fit and able to work, because if they didn't look presentable they would be considered not useful and killed by the Nazi's. Shaving would make their cheeks look pinker, as a young man's would. They made shaving a top priority, if they had to give up their bread for the day to shave, they would have to. Prisoners would use anything sharp they could find to shave, often times pieces of glass.

Capo's were prisoners that were picked by the Nazi leaders to be cruel to other prisoners. They would chose the cruelest men, or people that also hated jews to torment them. Capo's job was to go onto the busses of new prisoners and drag them out of the bus and separate them form their belongings. 

Cigarettes were given to the men or traded for their bread. Men would smoke the cigarettes when they knew they were going to die, because they wanted something small to enjoy. Something as small as a cigarette gives the prisoners happiness, even when they are facing the reality of death every day.