So! I have been in DC for the past 3 days for the Belfer Conference at the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum. I could write a blog per hour on all the things I thought about and dreamed about and learned about but I will (for now at least :) ) share this one thing with you.
There were around 100 teachers from across the US at the museum for the conference. I met so many wonderful people and sat in lots of class time with around 20 of them. We sat in the same seats at tables all three days so I got to talk to the 2 guys at my table, Josh and Fred. Josh was a younger guy that has been teaching high school in Missouri for about 3 years. He was just smart... he had read lots of books, seen lots of movies, and done all kinds of research about the Holocaust. Honestly though, Fred forty-upped us all. (He went well past the one-upping stage, well past!)
When I think about describing to you the way Fred looks, imagine the character Arthur Abbott (played by Eli Wallach) in the movie "The Holiday." Fred is about ten years younger than Arthur's character but has lots of quirks, he always laughs or smiles and enjoys asking thought-provoking questions. Now back to the subject. On the second day, we discovered that Fred is actually the son of a Holocaust survivor. His mother survived Auschwitz and although she is not alive now, Fred lives to tell the story of the Holocaust because of his mother's story. Today, we heard a woman named Nesse Godin (you can read or listen to her story here: Nesse's Story). Nesse was from Lithuania and was made fully aware of what the Germans were doing when she was 13 years old. She lived in a ghetto before she lived in a camp and was liberated after a "death march" in 1945. After Nesse shared her story with all of us, she spent some time in each class for lunch. I had gone out for a bit and when I came back, she was there speaking to the other teachers. Fred looked a bit teary-eyed as he walked back to our table but he didn't say much. It was as if he was thinking about what she had said but that there was also something deeper. We completed a survey and then went to hear Dr. David Crane (who was the chief prosecutor that indicted Charles Taylor, a past president of Liberia, in Sierra Leone in 2005-he's pretty famous FYI). That was the last part of our conference. We were released after that but were stopped in the lobby to receive certificates of completion. Fred was standing behind me talking about Nesse and he made this statement, "She was the voice of my mother." I could tell that it was heavy on him. His mother passed away a few years ago and now Fred works at a local Holocaust museum in the state of New York. I thought those words were a beautiful compliment to Nesse. Not that Fred's mother was more or less important than Nesse, but they represented something deeper than just surviving something.
When I got home, I was thinking about Fred's comment and then it occurred to me. How often do I leave a conversation with people or talking with people that God has placed in front of me where they could truly say, "She was the voice of my Father," "She was the voice of the Father." How many times could someone broken and damaged emotionally and physically leave a Christian and truly believe that they had just heard the "voice of the Father?" After hearing so much about genocide and violence and what hate does to destroy people, God reminded me to be a voice. Proverbs 31:8 reads,
"Speak up for those who cannot speak for themselves, for the rights of all who are destitute."
It is our great responsibility and privilege to be Nesse's, to be Fred's, and ultimately to be Jesus... to continue telling the story of those who have gone before us, to change the world through action, and to be the voice of the Father speaking Truth and encouragement into others.
Whose voice are speaking my friend? Something for us to think about... Melis
