Teacher blog

Centropa Summer Academy 2013

Hi everyone,

First of all I hope that you arrived safely to your homes and that you are with your families and friends.

How many times during our farewells last night did I hear, "See you in Sarajevo!" Centropa inspires teachers to want to return and reconnect with the stories and each other year after year. That's a testament to the films, to your amazing staff, and to the program well balanced between work sessions and moving locations to experience history. But it was the last day's session, film, and exhibit about the war in former Bosnia that made the biggest personal connection with me.

Teach Life

Once there was a life, a family, a community. They loved. They danced. They fought. They floundered. As I leave what I hope will be my first Centropa experience, I remain focused on the concept of memorialization. But this time instead of my conflict with memory through monument from an earlier blog, I am at ease with film as memory. At previous conferences including those I have attended as both participant and as facilitator, we would have many lectures: historians, authors, practitioners, and museum faculty.

A Haiku to Berlin's Heat

Walk. Sweat. Walk. Burn. Walk.

"No air in hotel."

Wurst: mouth-melting flames.

Final Whistle

I finally left Berlin after a wonderful, inspiring, buzzing week. The next weeks will be a bit more quiet so that I can sort out all the ideas that have gathered in my mind ... so far. A big THANKS to Centropa and a big THANKS to everybody!

My first bloging

Hello everybody

I am writting my first blog from Vienna while waiting to my connection flight to Sarajevo.

It was an amasing in Berlin and I learned a lot. I was amazed by the teachers inovation, energy and dedication. This is my first blog in life, I design web pages and have a major hoby on computers software but never write a blog. Since now I thought that bloging is for students and rockstars but not teachers. Well people change :) We changed quite a bit...

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Final Thoughts on CSA 2013

Sitting in the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung listening to the presentations is very enlightening.

The contribution that immigrants can make

Yesterday, when Ed spoke about how some intellectuals fled Nazi Germany and after I spoke with some of you about how European refugees contributed to the Allied victory, I was reminded of an article that I wrote for the Jerusalem Report years ago, when an Israeli professor won a Nobel Prize. I have written more about the contribution that em/immigrants can (and often do) make to a country, but those articles are in Dutch, and - unlike some of my students :-) - I do not rely on Google Translate.

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Jewish Museum

The tour of this museum teaching us about assimilation/self-determination was a complete success thanks to our amazing tour guide, Dominic, who made it very interactive, asking us A LOT of questions!

The shape of the building - what does it remind you of!? Thunder! Line! Scar! Everyone has a point - in line of history is not straight, and observed from above, the Museum is a big scar in the history of Berlin.
We were trying to figure if the living room in the picture was Christian or Jewish, a small test for the teachers observing Mendelson's room.

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Berlinische Gallerie

Today was a full day of viewing, thinking and linking. We first went to the Berlinische Gallerie where there is a wonderful collection of Weimar paintings. However, we focused primarily on three paintings: Der Tolle Platz, Felix Nuβbaum; Die Mutter, Otto Freundlich; Der Poet Iwar von Lücken, Otto Dix. These paintings are very representative of the societal angst that was felt between the two wars -- The life that was lost, the life of the present, and the life of the unknown future.