Teacher blog

Today was our first full day with the Centropa Summer Academy and it was a full day.

To say that I am impressed by the level of these educators from all over the world is an understatement.

Thanks to everyone here in Centropa, at the Diplomatic Academy, and in the outreach department of the City of Vienna and the countries of Austria and Germany for your support in this program.

Every life is unique, and virtually every person has a moving and often fascinating story to tell about his or her life and family, if you are just willing to listen and to ask the right questions. This is especially true for elderly people who survived the Holocaust. Today we were once again able to see and hear this with our own eyes and ears. Amy Vargas-Tonsi and I had the honor and pleasure to meet Julius Chaimowitz He told us the story of his family before, during, and after World War II.

From 1988 to 1991, noted artist Alfred Hrdlicka created his Monument againat War and Fascism in the Albertinaplatz in Vienna. This monument, while it deals with all of the victims, does pay special attention to the plight of the Jews, with the prone figure of a jew, tied down by barbed wire, being forced to scrub the streets. The granite bases were quarried from Mauthausen. Other, more recent memorials tend to indicate that Austria is coming to better grips with its past.

After the 1938 Anschluss of Austria by Nazi Germany, the Gestapo (Geheime Staatspolizei - Secret State Police) set up headquarters in the Hotel Metropole on Morinplatz. After the war the hotel was razed, and in 1951 a stone was placed at the former location in memoriam. The city of Vienna erected the current monument to all victims of National Socialism. The word "Jew" appears nowhere.

The headquarters of Casino Austria, across the street from Bank Austria and the University of Vienna, was formerly the residence of the Ephrussi in Vienna. By the way, it is no where as difficult to stand - or even sit - and look at the building from either of its two faces. I presume dramatic license on the part of the author. And on the ground floor is a branch of the Bank Austria and, the ultimate indignity, a Starbucks.

One of the first high-rise housing units in Paris was nicknamed La Cite de la Muette, "The Silent City," for its intended peacefulness. It was confiscated by the Nazi and turned into a detention and transit camp for Jews from France and elsewhere - and with the connivance of the Vichy Government, as France has only recently admitted. Before Liberation, 67, 400 were deported to the east - 6,000 of which were children. They were sent to Sobibor, Auschwitz-Birkenau, and other terminal destinations. Only 1, 542 were alive on 17 August 1944, when Allied forces entered the camp.

The Nazis, with the collaboration of the Vivhy government, deported over 40,000 people from the Royallieu-Compiegne transit camp, constructed on old French army barracks from the Great War. They were political prisoners, Jews, resistance fighters, and went to Dora and Auschwitz. After a death march, a German discovered various diaries and later returned them to Compiegne, where they are part of this collection.

At eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month of 1918, the bugles blew "All Quiet" on the Western Front. That armistice was signed in the forest just west of Compiegne in a railroad car. The marker in the foreground was the car where the document was signed, in the car occupied by Field Marshall Ferdinand Foch. The markers in the background show where the German coach was parked.

On 18 January 1871. King Wilhelm I of Prussia was declared Kaiser after France's defeat in the Franco-Prussian War in this room. This was the sting that lead Clemenceau to insist that the treaty ending the Great War be signed in this room on 28 June 1919, five years to the day after the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand. This, and in particular Article 231, courtesy of John Foster Dulles, will provide the fuel to fire the German desire for revenge and vindication.