Reknown Holocaust Expert Recounts Harrowing Tales of Another Survivor
By Zoe Gorman ‘09
News Staff Reporter
Noted Holocaust expert Dr. Debórah Dwork, Rose Professor of Holocaust History at Clark University, spoke last week at an all-school special program about the roots of the Holocaust and the consequences and relevance to universal moral issues in the 21st century.
She was one of a variety of speakers who came to Choate last week to educate the students about the Holocaust. Dr. Dwork led two lectures and put on a workshop for English and History teachers. She also ate dinner with the students in the Holocaust history elective.
Her main lecture was the Tuesday, January 10th special program for the entire school, where Marla Spivack ‘08 introduced her. This program was story-based. She gave another lecture the day before for the fourth form World History classes dealing with the historical analyses of Anti-Semitism in European history. Other Holocaust Educators visited Religion 200 classes and were very well received.
The programs were put together by Reverend Marc Trister with the help of The Curriculum Initiative. TCI works with rabbis in developing programs in independent schools about ethics and Jewish history. One of their programs was Jewbilee, held last year at Choate.
Marion Van Binsbergen Pritchard, a psychoanalyst, Cathy Cohen Lasry Distinguished Professor, and hero of Dr. Dwork’s stories, was unable to attend the special program because of an illness. “Dr. Dwork was going to, in a sense ‘interview’ her in front of us so she could tell her story. We always (since last June) planned that she would be here until I got a call very late last week from the people at the curriculum initiative that Marion took ill and had surgery and was just not in the position to travel down to Wallingford,” said Reverend Trister. “I think that was a loss because I think that for the students it would have been even more fascinating to here it from the horse’s mouth.”
Although Marion Pritchard did not come to the program, Dr. Dwork’s told many of her gripping stories from Ms. Pritchard days in the Nazi occupied Netherlands. Ms. Pritchard was taken to jail and abused there simply for being in a house where anti-Nazi resistance (that she didn’t know about) was going on. Another time, when Ms. Pritchard was riding her bike she saw Germans in front of a children’s home. They threw the Jewish children onto a truck. Two Dutch women resisted the Germans and were thrown into the truck as well. “All I felt was utter and total rage. And I was paralyzed. I did nothing,” Dr. Dwork recounted Marion’s emotions. That was when Marion Prichard decided that she would never be a bystander and do nothing again. She became a very active rescue worker for she “wanted to protect and help human beings,” said Dr. Dwork.
Positive Student Response “It was really fascinating. On the different stories of how she would smuggle the children away from the Nazi’s although she had no direct relationship with them. She was willing to shoot the guy to protect the kids.” Chloe Patton ’09.
Indeed, one of the students’ favorite stories involved Marion hiding Jewish children in her home and then shooting the Nazi who would take them away. “I remember Marion shooting a guy and that made me pretty excited and I remember going ‘Go Marion!’ and clapping with joy. I think it was a really influential story and I found it interesting, but next time I hope it will be shorter,” said Jung Ha Lim ’09 when asked about her experience regarding the story and the program in general.
“I loved the story. I want to know what else happened,” Daniela Lobo Dias ’09 added.
“I hope that the students appreciated the program. I hope that the Spears Endowment can provide annually a program that does more than just bring a lecturer to the school like we did this time. I thought that it grabbed people’s interest and held them. I think again it would have been so much more exciting if Marion was here. I wish that perhaps Dr. Dwork made some more leaps to contemporary things,” Reverend Trister said. “I think that it’s important for our students to understand about the Holocaust because there are people in the world today who are denying that it happened.”
For most students, the program was inspiring and thought-provoking. However, Nanna Waldroup ’09 claimed that she fell asleep because she could not see Dr. Dwork and therefore could not stay focused.
The majority of the students were captivated by the stories. “I enjoyed the program a lot. I thought that Dr. Dwork was a great story teller. I thought it could have been stronger if Miss Marion was there but Dr. Dwork did her justice in telling her story –and I didn’t yawn once! So I’d say it was pretty good,” Janelle Fouche ’07.
The Choate students, for the most part, look forward to more special programs that give educational insight through story telling.
