A Day Off

Some of you may have noticed an uncharacteristic lack of communication on my part in recent weeks. Don't worry, I haven't run out of things to say! School and all its attendant activities usually lands in full force about the end of September, and then I get my customary autumn cold that sets in when the weather begins to change. This year is no different - okay, this year is LOTS different, but not in some ways!

One great and unexpected blessing of life at LCC - which I know I've mentioned before - is the community of young teachers who spend time together after school, at lunchtime, on weekends, at church, etc. This past weekend, a number of us were able to tag along on the staff outing to visit a couple museum sites and the nearby city of Kaunas. I almost didn't go, considering my writing students all submitted their first essays last Friday, but I was persuaded I needed a day off and went along.

The first stop was at an outdoor folk museum called Rumsiske, where we spent more time walking in the beautiful woods toward the lake than actually visiting the model villages! Oh well. Our second stop was lunch and then on to Ninth Fort, outside of the town of Kaunas. The Ninth Fort was built in the eighteen hundreds and has been built up and fortified many times over during the years. It was used by both the Germans and Soviets during their respective occupations of Lithuania. During WWII, the fort was used as a prison and workcamp where Jews from the nearby Kaunas Ghetto were sent to be killed. Over 50,000 people are buried in the fields surrounding the fort, and a large memorial has been set up to commemorate the atrocities committed there.

No one is ever fully prepared to walk into a place like that and feel the reality of what was done there. I certainly wasn't, despite having visited sites like this one in the past and having been to the Holocaust Memorial in D.C. recently. There is a palpable sensation you get when walking into a place that housed so much evil. It makes your skin clammy and cold, and no amount of small laughter can fill up the empty concrete corridors of such a place.

There were several artifacts in the museum displays that have really stuck with me. One was a photograph of an old woman being embraced by a younger woman. This was in the exhibit dedicated to those who risked themselves to protect Jewish families. This older woman was responsible for saving the young woman's life, and the picture is being taken on the young woman's wedding day. I tried to let that story sink in - to imagine what a potent and bittersweet joy you would feel on a day like that, when so many others never lived to be married, to have children. Another powerful display was a collection of keys, rusty and broken, that had been dug up from the mass graves around the fort during excavations in the 60s. Every single one of those keys opened a door to someone's home, to a family, to a favorite room, to a house that that individual never returned to. Every one of those keys had a face and a name and a life connected to it.

I try to be reverent in the face of such anguish. What else can I do? I always walk past such photographs and imagine how I would feel if it were my family story being read by strangers. What would I want them to feel? I would want them to feel something. And to sit for at least a few minutes on a bench remembering that the sunshine on their faces is a gift, that their place in a peaceful moment of history is a gift, that at any moment we might be called on to face the horrible fragility of our human bodies and lives. I would want them to feel a little guilty, and greatly thankful, and to let history settle heavily and unforgettably into their gut.

Then I would want them to get up and walk with friends, and to think about how numbers mean nothing, but how one human life outweighs the whole world. I would want them to cherish and value human contact, and to enjoy the day at hand in whatever form it takes. I would want them to go into Kaunas and walk along the river, to take pictures of churches and brides, and to climb under fences and to stop for cappucinos. And not for one second to take any of it for granted.

Which is what we did.