Daring to Hope: Friday

Holocaust Museum (First ½ of our day)

Alfred Feldman (A Holocaust survivor and author of “One step Ahead”) with some of our group.

Driving to D.C. I ended up taking a little detour along the parkway across the Potomac River, seeing bridges that would take us back over to the part of D.C. that we needed to be in but the only problem was that I was driving under the bridges and not on them which is where I needed to be. All ended well though. The girls were very patient and pleasant and made no attempt at any disrespectful comments. The Guppies were amazing and encouraging as we tried to navigate our way back to civilization. At last we came across a police station and pulled over asking for directions. The officer invited us all on and everyone took a much needed restroom break while the officer explained to me that the only way to get back to where we needed to go was to make an “illegal turn”. We found it quiet amusing that an officer just gave us permission to make this illegal turn and were on our way. We made it to our destination in no time at all. And this time were blessed to find a hidden $10 parking lot that was 500% better then the scary parking deck two days earlier.

No cameras were aloud in the holocaust exhibits, which was defiantly for the best. I really think that every middle schooler should go through the holocaust museum. It was heart breaking for me to go though and I have been though a few times before, but this time was definitely different. From time to time my group of girls needed a reminder to be respectful, and I would need to ask the boys to stop distracting the girls. But 90% of the time the girls were fully engaged and were absolutely outraged at the injustice that they saw documented before them. “How could this happen Ms.Suzanne… How could there be so much hate?... I would never have believed the Nazies I would have known they were lying… (Hesitation) Do you think I would have known?” The questions were endless. Questions that didn’t really demand an answer but that just had to be asked aloud or ones heart would burst of the pain that we were witnessing.

Many of the girls brought up that they had heard about Anne Frank. They had never read her diary they just had heard about her. (Do they not teach you about this in school I wanted to ask, but didn’t.) More than 4-5 girls asked me if we could watch the “Dairy of Anne Frank” when we got back to Greensboro. So this even will be planned soon.

P.S. If you would like to donate Diaries for the girls to have. (We will give them out the night we watch the movie) Please let me know ASAP!

At then end of our tour we went to the book store. There in the book store to many kids delight was Alfred Feldman (A Holocaust survivor and author of “One step Ahead”). The kids asked endless questions and stood there with such awe and respect for Mr. Feldman, you would have thought that they were meeting he person of their dreams. We stood there for well over 30 minutes talking and getting autographs. Mr. Feldman seemed more than pleased that the kids were so interested and had so many questions, and the kids esp. one of the boys “k” couldn’t believe that he was talking to a real survivor. Mr. Feldman was definitely the hero of the day.