Last Friday we held our annual Holocaust Day of Remembrance. Our keynote speaker, Sol Goldstein, a U.S. soldier and Buchenwald liberator, offered a moving, personal account of what he saw during WW II and what he witnessed at the death camp which was all the more moving because he, himself, is a Jew. All of us who heard him were deeply touched by his story. It was especially poignant to me because only a few days before, over spring vacation, I had visited Sachsenhausen, another concentration camp close to Berlin.
Over spring break I had the privilege to travel with Upper School history teacher Gail Rauch-Tilstra and 15 students on a European history trip with a focus on the two World Wars. We were in Germany, the Netherlands, Belgium and France, visiting battle sites, the Anne Frank house, memorials and hearing from many points of view the enormous impact of these events on world history and on people still today. What impressed me the most about traveling with our students was their intellectual curiosity and their exemplary behavior and courtesy – to and with each other, their chaperones and with everyone we met on the journey. Each of our travel guides in Western Europe commented about how attentive, respectful and polite our Roland Park Country School girls were. It was a joy to be with them even when a few of them were fighting a stomach bug! Touring Europe and learning with our students lets me see everything in a new light – through their eyes.
One of the students, who brought along lots of book to read, kindly lent me one when I ran out of my reading material! The True Story of Hansel and Gretel by Louise Murphy is a thought-provoking transformation of a class fairy tale. Set in Poland during WWII, the story is about a Jewish brother and sister left to wander the woods after their father and stepmother left them on their own, hoping they will not be found by the Nazis. Their parents frantically beg them never to say their Jewish names, but to identify themselves as Hansel and Gretel. In a reversal of the original tale, the children meet an old woman named Magda, known as a "witch,” who risks her life to save them from the Germans. There is a quote in the epilogue of the book that stayed with me while I was in Europe with our students and resonated again while I listened to our Day of Remembrance speaker. Sol Goldstein believes that it was his wife and her love which saved him, indeed redeemed him, from a life of horrible memories from the war and the liberation of Buchenwald and the subsequent events of the final days before the Nazi surrender.
There is much to love, and that love is what we are left with. When the bombs stop dropping, and the camps fall back to the earth and decay, and we are done killing each other, that is what we must hold. We can never let the world take our memories of love away, and if there are no memories, we must invent love all over again.
The power of love can never be underestimated and it is something that we need to reiterate time and again to our children and model for them.
Signs of spring are beginning to show on our campus and I especially love this time of year for its promise and hope. The star magnolia and the cherry trees are in bloom and our students are anxiously awaiting the warmth of sunshine on their skin in the Chapple and Centennial Courtyards. I look forward to our spring contests on the athletic fields, and our drama, dance and choral performances. I hope to see you on campus in these closing months of this school year.
As you are aware, Roland Park Country School is engaged in a researched-based strategic marketing project with Ian Symmonds & Associates. Later this spring they will be conducting a web-based survey for parents. The web survey is mostly quantitative in nature and seeks to find the factors that influence a family's decision to attend RPCS and some demographic information. The parent web survey should take no more than 15 minutes to complete. I hope you will participate when you see the email from Ian Symmonds & Associates.