We left for Kalamazoo to catch the Wolverine at 4:30 and we arrived in Chicago on time. However after that, the rains came – and they were heavy. After signal problems came the flash flood warnings and when we left the station the train moved slowly – 15 miles an hour for 60 miles or more. When all is said and done, we were five hours late. Of course that meant our planned Wednesday meeting with Justice Sotomayor was canceled and the Supreme Court tour. However, her Honor graciously offered to see us on Thursday afternoon after our visit with Senator Levin. It will be a full day tomorrow and an exciting one. Here are some pictures for you to get a sense of our time together on Tuesday and ending at dinner in Washington DC on Wednesday at 7:00pm.
The Journey Goes to Washington D.C. June 15-20 2010
June 14th, 2010The eleven 8th Grade students from Muskegon and Newaygo Counties who have spent this school year studying racism through the lens of the Shoah (Holocaust) will be leaving for Washington DC on June 15. They will arrive in D.C. on June 16 and will have a brief time to get ready before their interview with Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor. On Thursday the group meets Senator Carl Levin and then goes to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.
EACH DAY we will be posting pictures and diary entries on this blog from students. It is our hope you will follow us in our journey to D.C. and share our excitement and enjoyment.
2010 Shoah Commemoration and Future Events
June 5th, 2010The 2010 Shoah Commemoration Events were the same yet different, the same but new. The same can be said of our speaker Dr. Miriam Brysk from Ann Arbor Michigan, professor of Microbiology, artist, speaker on the Holocaust and survivor of the ghetto. Miriam’s presentation was different than those we have had in the past because her survival was not only about the ghetto, but also her family’s survival as a part of the partisans in the area and nation we know as Belarus. She held the attention of 130 people attending the 16th Annual Shoah Commemoration Service at Samuel Lutheran Church in downtown Muskegon Michigan as she unfolded her story and that of her family as they faced the tide of Nazi conquest and terror and selection and Einsatzgruppen death squads – a precursor to the death camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, Sobibor, Treblinka and more in eastern Poland. She addressed the situation through the eyes of a child who experienced the loss of family, selection, escape and survival in the partisan camps which were anything but family friendly and child friendly. She talked about having her sexual identity shielded out of fear of rape; of being left behind because she was a risk to partisans from the Nazi’s seeking them out.