Yom HaShoah. Remembrance Day for the Holocaust. My thoughts go to Mayer and Rose Zar who had survived. I gladly bore their speaking expenses to bring them to middle school students I taught some years ago. So many of the heroes and heroines of history exist only in books, and are not easily accessible nor very three dimensional to young people like my heroin Noor Inayat Khan.
She was an Indian princes, scholar and musician who worked for British Special Operations Executive during World War II. She was parachuted into France, as she grew up there, and was charged with the task of transmitting information regarding troop movements in northern France. She was later captured and executed by the Nazis who never learned her real name. Sophie Scholl also comes to mind.
She was a member of a non-violent resistance group die WeiBe Rose, the White Rose, and attended the University of Munich where, shortly after the battle of Stalingrad, she and her brother, Hans distributed anti-Nazi leaflets. They were caught, convicted of high treason, and executed by guillotine.
When the film "Schindler's List" was issued on DVD, the film's producer, Steven Spielberg, made one copy of the film available to each secondary school in the country. This corresponded to the time of year I brought the Zars to make their presentation to middle school students. Consequently, following board policy, we distributed and gathered the necessary parent permission slips.
My building principal thought it would be good to show the film in conjunction with the presentation. The Zars thought it a good ideas as well. Rose, with false papers indicating that she was a Polish Catholic, worked as a maid for the highest SS Officer in Nazi occupied Poland, and her interesting story is found in her book "In The Mouth Of The Wolf," which was donated to the middle and high school libraries. Mayer had worked as slave labor for I.G. Farben. He still had the numerical tattoo on the inside of his left forearm given to him in the camps. There is a scene in the film where Oskar Schindler makes an appeal to a director of I.G. Farben to save his Jews. He did not.
Shortly before the Zars were to give their presentation, I received a phone call from the superintendent of schools directing me not to show the film. A couple of days later I received an officious document stating the same thing. Dr. Harman would need that document in the event I was insubordinate and showed the film. He rejected the building principal's idea to show the film, and he did not follow his own board's advice about allowing students with signed parent permission slips to view the film. He was above all that.
At the end of their presentation, I walked Mayer and Rose to their vehicle, thanked them, and as I turned to go back into the building and to my class, I knew in my heart I would never bring them back again. I did not want to be the messenger to bring them anymore pain. It was the last I saw them. Mayer and Rose are all gone now. May they have the peace that was taken from them.
