MY "PROJECT LOG"
WEDNESDAY, APRIL 6, FLIGHT SEU-962-L TO KRAKOW
On this Tuesday evening, the day before departure, it was impossible to sleep. Impossible to shut one eye, even for a second. Too many things, too many questions that will remain unanswered.
At three o'clock, in front of the school, everyone is there... or almost...
Pale faces, tense smiles. I am relieved, they don’t seem to be in the state of excitement that usually characterizes a school trip.
But, it must be recognized that this trip does not have much of a scholastic character in the end, despite the conditions under which it takes place.
I believe that I did everything I could to convey a piece of stolen dignity to the victims. Anyway, I couldn’t go any further... Not the courage, not the desire...
I still haven’t provided an answer to this question that bothers me: "why go to Auschwitz?"
At the sight of this vocational high school class on this plane with us, vulgar, unable to sit still, blocking the central aisle, giggling like idiots and who don’t seem to be aware of where they are going, I catch myself thinking (why?) that they do not deserve to go to Auschwitz. What will they be able to understand these kids who were giggling, torn between fear and excitement during the takeoff? Should we really inflict this on the memory of this million destroyed beings?
A quick glance back at mine... Reassured... They don’t move. Calmly seated, they talk. Not too much laughter, at least not too loud. That reassures my conscience as a teacher who still believes - who sometimes still believes - that her students are the reflection of what she is. Ridiculous!
Ah! Benjamin with a camera... First downside... What did I say? No cameras, no more than mobile phones. We’re not going on a photo safari at the Palmyre zoo... Failed... A souvenir photo of the guys, like in any other place... Does this mean that in ten years, fifteen or twenty years, the only memory that will remain will be this one, the photo of the group in front of a brick wall of which we no longer know exactly what it was?
Well... Let’s avoid overreacting even before arriving at the crime scene. Even before letting this day pass. It’s not time for balance sheets yet. Isn’t the main thing that a trace remains? I’m tired of hearing nonsense about the Holocaust, untruths and approximations. It is not a matter of future generations preventing "this" from happening again. Simple respect for the memory of suffering. Simple respect for History itself.
I would like to be able to remember this very beautiful text on history, quoted in the last chapter of Wieviorka, entitled "Why Auschwitz?". But the words don’t come back. The only thing I can access at this moment is a sensation. That of the reader who, writing so poorly, is reassured, comforted to read in the words of another what, coming from the bottom of her heart, she cannot express.
THURSDAY, APRIL 7, RESPONSE, VELIBOR
"Here it’s been raining for a week, and it’s coming (the rain) pretty well - me too, I’m very, very "grey" if I may say so... That way, the sky, the fleet and me - we go very well together..."
There is an infinite number of grays and some are brighter than others.
My gray yesterday, facing the entrance of Birkenau, was opaque and threatening. It prevented me from breathing and confused my senses. He was telling me very clearly to turn back.
During the day, this gray changed. There was a gray of distress in my kids' eyes. A gray who said, even before their words could conceive it, the pain of awareness. Bewilderment and stupor. Many of them took refuge in my arms, and my gray became a little less opaque, a little brighter. One can feel pain from others, outside oneself, outside one’s family ties and outside one’s own time.
Then, this gray lit up again. When on bended knee, very close to Crematorium no. 2, the heat of a lighter’s flame set ablaze the wick of these ten little candles for these ten souls crushed in this hell.
A strange sense of appeasement as that of honoring an old promise to a tender friend who cannot yet wander this place himself, so much does it frighten him. Appeasement also because Birkenau is so calm, so tranquil. Nature doesn’t give a damn about human suffering. From now on, the birds will sing anew in Birkenau. Strange things happen there in this very strange place. I didn’t manage to feel it as the largest cemetery in the world. I felt a place of life there, I felt "their" presence. Beings with immense eyes, wandering in the grassy ruins of what was the place of their torment. Huge eyes, full of compassion, for the tears that the living shed there. It seemed to me that this 6-year-old child is not trapped in Jean-Marie’s chest, as he says, but that he was sitting there, on a pile of red bricks, so monstrously typical of the region, looking, vaguely indifferent, perhaps a bit curious, ten small flames flickering at the foot of a stele as black as death.
I also saw a Gilles Clamens, exceptionally silent. I often followed his silhouette with my eyes, walking in front of me, his schoolbag in hand. Because Gilles came to Auschwitz with his school bag, so full that the closure threatened to open at every moment. Inside, neatly arranged,
I saw Anne Servat, pale, so terribly pale, walking mechanically. She seemed to me a being who had come back from the dead.
Strange place than Birkenau. How many places are there where, among some fifty people, you can still feel alone? I felt pain in Birkenau. I felt pain at the Stammlager. And yet I am happy that this pain hit me. Jules was the one accompanying us. A little Jules, a little man with gray hair and very blue eyes, whose testimony is sometimes heard in terrible sobs. His gaze, which is first veiled, which is lost in a time, which for us is colorless, gray like archival images, then words that no longer "come out", the voice that breaks and the long hiccup of distress. These archival images then, for us, went from gray to color. A body that hunger has dislocated and put in an oven is no longer gray, from this past gray of learned memory. I took a great lesson in humanity at Auschwitz. Thanks to Jules, who returns to this place, tirelessly, despite the suffering, to talk about it to kids who are so far from all that.
And the miracle is that this distancing has suddenly disappeared, the suffering having become their own. I really doubted the relevance of bringing high school students on a "trip" to Auschwitz for a few hours. How many hours, precisely, spent with Gilles and Anne to discuss this question. What vanity! How could we have doubted, questioned ourselves, kept on gloating about this?! Also out of the camp, as we were about to head back on the road, I realized that one day I would have to return to Auschwitz. Can you believe that? That in a place where millions of people were trying to survive, destroyed by the idea that they would never get out of it, one could feel the imperious desire, the imperious need to return? Strange place that Auschwitz...
Forgive me for getting you drunk with that, for showing off my navel... my life, my work, what I felt at Auschwitz... But, it’s stronger than me, I just let my fingers run on the keyboard. Here too, it’s raining.
Kisses.
Nathalie.
FRIDAY, APRIL 8, UNEXPECTED REACTIONS
4 p.m., visibly very moved, the students enter the classroom, they are all there, even those who are not in 1
Many are those who say their distress in the face of misunderstanding by others. From now on, they consider themselves to belong to a kind of circle: those who were there, those who saw, those who know. Very frequently, they tell of having felt a violent anger against their comrades who, not having shared this experience with them, ask them "so, was Auschwitz nice?" , "was it good?". They say that they are outraged that one can ask for such things, while admitting that they found themselves unjust in making such reproaches. Some cried because they were suffering from not being able to tell anyone. They were eagerly waiting for these two hours of class so that they could finally talk about it "among themselves, who know and feel the same thing". The same problem occurs in families. There are those who feel they have been lucky, because they were able to talk with their parents. They all report that they couldn’t stop talking. The words were endless. The others, and in particular the residents or those whose parents were not present for professional reasons, admit to having had a very trying day on Thursday, torn between the need to speak and the difficulty of putting words into what they felt. For some, it seemed necessary to go through the written word. They put on paper what they could not say.
I am particularly worried about the feeling they evoke of feeling cut off from others. The work of restitution is therefore essential, for the memory of the Shoah, certainly, but also and above all in this case, for themselves. They react with great violence to the words of those who "dared" to tell them that we had to turn the page, that it was in the past, that they had been lucky enough to make this trip, but that we had to move on. Summary, very normal and understandable in the end, of what most parents, distraught by their tears, were able to tell them. They claim not to want to turn the page, that it is too important. That we could consider that it is a thing of the past, certainly terrible, certainly not to be forgotten, but that it is a thing of the past, seems obscene to them.
At the risk of excessive parrainage, listening to them, I sometimes had the impression that they were in an almost mystical perception. This is especially noticeable in their indignation following the behavior of some of the students from Bordeaux who visited the same group. The lack of recollection, respect and manifestation of sharing suffering deeply shocked them. Two days after the trip, tears still come to their eyes at the evocation of certain reflections or attitudes of these students from Bordeaux.
It is true that some of these students had a "borderline" behavior, but I know, as a teacher, that we do not control everything, that some students are difficult regardless of the circumstances and that the "group effect" can make some people odious. I even expected, within this class that I accompanied, behaviors that exceed the teachers, but which we know are inevitable (like, for example, the student who looks at his watch in front of the crematoria and says "when I think that at this time we should be in class!"). Can we really blame them? On this Wednesday, April 6, I admit that I was very surprised not to have heard any such reflection and very surprised by the reverence with which the students approached this visit. And to be perfectly honest, I felt a strange pride about it. "My" students were perfect!! This is a class in which I am the main teacher and, in addition to history and geography, I supervise in ECJS and TPE, which is 7 hours per week on average. Our relationships are quite good, I particularly enjoy working with them and I think the converse is true for most of them, when reading the notes they slipped in with the bouquet of flowers. Perhaps in my relationship with the Shoah and the way I teach it, I went too far. Perhaps I revealed myself too much, I showed myself too affected by my subject of study. I probably committed a fault by losing sight of what makes history. Thus triggering reactions in CHA that escape all control. I knew that this trip would touch them (otherwise, I wouldn’t have created this project) and that it would bring a "plus" to their history class, but I didn’t imagine for a second that it would be such streams of tears, so palpable suffering. I don’t really know how to handle it.