{"id":1263,"date":"2020-10-01T06:46:33","date_gmt":"2020-10-01T11:46:33","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/?p=1263"},"modified":"2025-08-18T15:06:46","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T20:06:46","slug":"september-october-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/september-october-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"September\/October 2020: Starting year long Chicago BZ Scholor in Residency – teaching, outside, masked during COVID – we did it!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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September is a month of new beginnings, when kids start school and the Jewish New Year begins\u2014but this school year is unlike any other, with almost everyone doing almost everything VIRTUALLY, including going to school. Yet, there is an exception in Chicago, and I\u2019d like to describe what\u2019s happening there, since I\u2019ve been privileged to be teaching there these last few weeks of September and now into October.<\/p>\n

Bernard Zell Anshe Emet Day School in urban Chicago is a multi-denominational Jewish school that is celebrating its 75th anniversary this year\u2014the oldest school of its kind in the United States. It is well staffed, well respected and well-run.<\/p>\n

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\nSocially distanced chairs ready for students<\/p>\n

I was invited to be their Scholar-in- Residence for a year long Photography project. This project was created, conceptualized and organized by History teacher, Dr. Jeff Ellison, whom I met decades ago in Jerusalem when we both presented papers at a prestigious conference at Yad Vashem.<\/p>\n

Although most of my classes this year will be, of necessity, taught virtually on Zoom, we felt it would be a great advantage for me to start working with the kids in person. And thanks to the grit, creativity, and determination of the school\u2019s administration (Head of School, Gary Weisserman, Head of Middle School, Stephanie Bloom, and Chief Advancement Officer, Marna Goldwin) and of course, History teacher, Dr. Jeff Ellison, they found a way for me to begin teaching in person (9 classes\u20143 for each section). It was so great to meet the students in person, to forge relationships with them directly, and to start this year-long project with our face to face interactions (It\u2019s actually more accurate to say, \u2018mask to mask interactions\u2019) before we started zooming the subsequent classes.<\/p>\n

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\nLeft to right: Jeff Ellison, Ann Weiss, Marna Goldwin and Stephanie Bloom<\/p>\n

Our year long project revolves around Photography\u2014both general photographic principles, where I teach the students how to analyze and interpret photos. In our first class, I described my own work and the precious personal photos found at Auschwitz-Birkenau, carried by Jews, who believed they were going to be worked, not murdered. I was able to share the discovery of how these photos were found, how they were saved\u2014thanks to a leader of the Jewish Underground at Auschwitz-Birkenau, who said \u201cIf we can\u2019t save the people, let us at least save their memories!\u201d\u2014concluded the lesson with how we might view them now. <\/p>\n

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\nA newly purchased microphone made it possible for the students to hear Ann\u2019s voice, behind the mask.<\/p>\n

Our second class involved specific stories of specific people in specific photos. In addition to information about individuals in the photos, I felt that\u2014because of this \u2018needle in the haystack\u2019 kind of research\u2014 it was also important to explain how these improbable identifications were made. I chose to focus on three stories in particular: 1-Architect Benjamin Hirsch, who accidentally saw the last photo of his brother and sister when I spoke at a conference, and screened my film; 2-Nahum Gitler and Tova Stawski, who went to pre-state Israel\/Palestine as teenagers in 1934 to build a homeland (and also one of Israel\u2019s first kibbutzim, Dagania); and 3-Dr. and Mrs. Taranszewski, who could have no children of their own, but nevertheless managed to create a \u2018family\u2019 for the children of the Bendin Orphanage, whom they visited nearly every day.<\/p>\n

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\nLast photo of Roselena and Werner Hirsch<\/p>\n

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\nNachum Gitler and his wife Towa Stawski (on left) with a friend in Tel Aviv, 1937<\/p>\n

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\nDr. and Mrs. Taranszewski with a baby he had delivered, little Abraham Malach<\/p>\n

In our last in-person class, the students were introduced to a formal History of Photography, so that they might understand the context for modern photography and exactly where the photos from Auschwitz fit into the historical timeline. By the end of this third class, we started to analyze specific photos. Was this taken by a professional photographer or a skillful (or not so skillful) amateur? What is happening in the photo? What cues can you find about relationships in the photograph? We will continue this process in October, as I continue to teach them more cues into \u2018reading\u2019 (analyzing) photographs.<\/p>\n

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\nStudents with their photo pack, featuring Hirsch and Gitler Families<\/p>\n

I\u2019d like to close with a story that touched me very deeply. I had finished explaining to the class what Auschwitz was like when I first entered in 1986, and the kinds of heartbreaking items they displayed (floor-to-ceiling shoes from the last few days of killing, mounds of ashen hair, piles of simple gold wedding rings, mountains of prosthetic limbs, and even tiny babies booties). Then I explained what happened when I got lost from my group and was alone in a locked Auschwitz: an employee found me frantically running, looking for anyone alive, and beckoned me closer with a wagging finger and these few words, \u201cDo you want to see what\u2019s in this room?\u201d\u2014and that\u2019s how I first saw these remarkable photos, hidden in a locked room, unknown to the world for decades.<\/p>\n

When I asked the students questions about the photos, I got many good answers. \u201cWhy do you think the Nazis destroy all the personal photos that Jews brought with them?\u201d Some answered, \u201cto erase their memories;\u201d others said \u201cto forget the people and the life they once lived\u201d\u2014both were good answers. The students eventually hit the primary reason: \u201cto get rid of pictures that showed Jews were not subhuman\u201d\u2014the way the Nazis were telling their people.<\/p>\n

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\nAnn saying goodbye to the students<\/p>\n

Finally I asked, \u201cWhy do you suppose that the Auschwitz employee unlocked the door and showed me the secret cache of photos?\u201d Again, the students offered many good answers but there was one response that, in the more than 30 years I\u2019ve been talking about these photos, I\u2019ve never heard one as sweet as this one: <\/p>\n

A student in the last row, Benjamin, raised his hand and said: \u201cSo you would feel better after the terrible things you saw at Auschwitz.\u201d Amazing.<\/p>\n

Teaching these students at the Bernard Zell School has been so exciting. They are enthusiastic, totally engaged and display creative thinking in almost every interaction. Over the course of this school year, we\u2019ll work on a number of photography projects\u2014including teaching the students, together with their art teacher, Gili Sherman, how to take photos and create their own photo exhibition.<\/p>\n

In the months to come, I\u2019ll write more about our progress, but for now\u2014since this is the end of my in-person classes\u2014I\u2019ll close by simply saying what a great privilege it is for me to teach these kids, and how stimulating it has been to share ideas with their teachers and to experience, first hand, the caring environment of this school. <\/p>\n

When people care, it truly shows\u2014and it has an impact on how a child grows, how a child learns and how a child comes to think about themselves. I only wish that every child in every school in the country (and throughout the world) could have access to the kind of attention and high quality education that the students at the Zell School are getting! What a world THAT would be!!<\/p>\n

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September is a month of new beginnings, when kids start school and the Jewish New Year begins\u2014but this school year is unlike any other, with almost everyone doing almost everything VIRTUALLY, including going to school. Yet, there is an exception in Chicago, and I\u2019d like to describe what\u2019s happening there, since I\u2019ve been privileged to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":7778,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1,5],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1263","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-fromann","category-previous"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/7778"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1263"}],"version-history":[{"count":9,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1712,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1263\/revisions\/1712"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1263"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1263"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thelastalbum.org\/content\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1263"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}