Last week we started out the school year with some fun activities for staff. During one activity, the word “ghetto” was used twice in a phrase to describe one of the teachers. There was some real and some nervous laughter in the room. Later, in a staff announcement, people discussed how the use of that word made certain people uncomfortable. Some teachers affirmed that feeling for themselves.
This was a powerful teaching moment because it came back to how the students would feel if that word were used in a class activity. There was a call for the staff to do more work in this area.
As a Social Science teacher who explores 300 years of American history with 8th graders every year, I am very concerned with the need to be aware of, and careful with, how words are used in class. This is important because mistakes happen and we need to learn from them and find ways to prevent them in the future.
For example, last year we spent a lot of time in Advisory talking about the use of the word “hate.” We talked about how when someone says: “I hate the lunch they have at school” they aren’t being sensitive to people who have actually experienced hate in their lives (much less the people who make and serve the lunch). We also talked about how using that word minimizes the real hate that takes place in the world. Finally we suggest that maybe people could choose a different word or phrase that more accurately expresses those feelings or that sentiment.
But that’s not what hit me when I read the discussion about our activity in the meeting. What hit me was that nobody knows about my family history, or the history of every Jewish family, that includes a story about “ghetto life.”
My grandparents Max and Anna Lakritz both came from Europe to America in the early part of the 20th century. Anna was born Channa Wojnilowicer and she emigrated to Canada from a small town called Nesvizh.
Max served in the Army and they were married in Detroit. Max and Anna were the lucky ones settling into their American life while the Jews of Nesvizh ended up being in the middle between the Russians and Germans after the end of WWI.
The family ghetto story comes from Nesvizh because that’s where the first ghetto uprising against the Nazis took place.
Some of my grandmother’s family stayed behind when she left. Some ended up losing their life in either Russian-backed pogroms, the battle for control between Germany and Russia, or at the hands of the Nazis. I would like to think that at least one of them may have lived to fight the Nazis in WWII but there is no evidence of that either way.
Cholawski wrote about the experience of the Jews being pushed into ghettos by the Germans and the control that came down on the Jews whenever the Russians took control of the area. (*I just happened to re-read the book this summer and I was shocked to see the similarities between what’s happening with Russian soldiers in Ukraine today.)
To me, the saddest part of Cholawski’s Nesvizh story happens near the end where he describes making his way back home after surviving the war. He walks into his old house and his former neighbors have moved in taking their furniture as well. Looking at him as if he was an alien from Mars, they dismiss him without saying a word by looking back down to the dinner table where they were seated.
After a moment Cholawaski walks out the door, into the street, and then walks away.
In this Jew’s case, enough had been said. They no longer needed words to express their true hate.
