The Great Führer Gives a City to the Jews

me: I'm going to Terezin on Friday.
Uncle Bob: What's that?
me: A Nazi concentration camp.
Uncle Bob: Oh. I think the Germans called it Thereseinstadt.
me: Yeah.
Uncle Bob: Wow, Fred. You're living the history I only read about.

It was an hour’s bus ride away. The transition from Prague to the countryside was sudden; any semblance of a suburbia would be like a fleeting dream of South San Francisco or Daly City, foggy but colorful. And then, it was PODUNK, Iowa – though instead of cornfields and cows, it was hopsfields and hares the size of dogs.

Translation: Work Will Make One Free

Terezin is a fortress that was used by the Nazis as a concentration camp for Central European Jews. Nazi propaganda presented it as a day spa. In fact, the title of this blog post was sung by the children of the camp in a Nazi-glorification propaganda film that was distributed to the world community to counter stories of the horrors. Unsuspecting Jews treated it like a cruise on the Titanic; they dressed up and bought tickets for getaways to this “day spa.” In reality, it was a holding pen for many on the way to extermination at Auschwitz. Though Terezin did not have gas chambers, living conditions caused thousands to die on site. Between the years of 1941 and 1945 150.000 Jews passed through this camp en route to the “final solution.”

Communal Showers

When one goes to Terezin, there’s a pretext that one believes in the Holocaust. When I came to college, my knowledge about certain things came alive and I resented that everything in history and politics was taught as historical fact. It happened in a different time to a different people. Now write a report or get tested on the names of dead white guys.

[Sidebar poem from Deputy Mayor of Newark, NJ Ras Baraka that he presented at HBO Def Poetry Jam:

I wanna hear an American poem about sharecroppers on the side of the road or families in cardboard boxes, not about kings or majestic lands or how beautiful ugly can be. I wanna hear some American poetry about projects and lead poisoning, poverty and children in jail.]

Sleeping for 150-plus, no mattresses to futilely prevent bugs and one lump of coal for winter heating

In middle school, I had a German and a Jewish friend: Kyle Zachrich and Charlie Gray. Between us and a Japanese kid named Yusako, we had a lot to satirize about 20^th century international political discourse. Kyle would joke that he was going to make soap out of Charlie. Charlie would respond in kind with some other quip and we’d all laugh at my dad’s southern accent.

Hanging gallery

In the end, one could hardly criticize middle-schoolers for their lack of sobriety with WWII. Only in my college African Diaspora course with Professor Michael Gomez did I sense outrage with the play-down of world atrocities with the passage of time. I asked myself where this was in my previous history classes. I realized the span of the institution of slavery in the world and the systemic marginalization of Africans not just in the Americas, but also as they reach for an equal footing in international politics. But that course was more than just learning about African peoples, it was also about not taking things for granted.

Shooting gallery

Robert Uhelski was my favorite and most adorable high school history teacher. He not only was able to make history out to be an overhead of bullet points, he was also able to over-explain his jokes. He introduced me to the great wars. One time, he presented to class an authentic red Nazi arm band and a copy of Hitler’s Mein Kampf. It was surreal to handle object of history without a glass case. Mein Kampfs are banned in Germany but are actually a top seller of republished books in the US. He buys these things off of eBay.

“Don’t worry. It’s not like I parade around in my SS boots saluting the Führer.”

A Poor Spy (originally entitled It's a Regular Life)

As a self-deputized spy for the United States of America, I have started a new internship with the Czech Republic Government's Department of Information on European Affairs. My daily doings include ordering "Appletini - shaken, not stirred" and saying "Wong - Fred Wong." The office's charge is informing the Czech public about European Union affairs and my duties are totally up to me in reaching that aim. Quite exciting. And everyone is young and delightful and we are ready to EU all over Czech. And the other intern is Kari Lipshutz - who by the way can dance like no other.

I woke up today to snow snow snow all over Prague. It gave the city a nice Soviet flavor. Though it is raining now. And I was doing my taxes and fafsa form this morning - and I was reminded that I.am.poooor. when I reviewed my account statements. Like - $12 a day poor (until I go back home). Because of my state, I will probably be taxed of a ginormous amount because we live in a taxing system that honors those who wouldn't mind an extra Land Rover or winter house in Aspen. AND then I will be penalized for being a college student by the heart-breaking budget proceedings:

The ongoing House budget reconciliation is pissing me off. It proposes to cut almost $13 Billion from student loan programs and to up the burden on college parents by $2 Billion by increasing interest rates on college loans. I wrote a letter to my Representative, Joe Knollenberg (pictured and whom I campaigned against in 2002) and he got back really quick (as expected from any multi-term congressman with a disciplined constituency cases outfit) - with a saddening letter that discussed his congressman's kids' situations in college. I don't need Joe Knollenberg to tell me what my poorness means to him. I need him to discuss the issues - and I DARE HIM to JUSTIFY THIS COSTLY WAR and to JUSTIFY MAKING THE TAX CUTS FOR THE RICH PERMANENT. WHAT?!?!?

STOP THE RAID ON STUDENT AID

Anyway, I am getting into the groove of this life and it is thrilling - thrilling to know my way around Wenceslas Square and Namesti Miru and to shop at Albert and cook dinners with blue cheese and klobasa and to walk like I do in New York except there's cobblestone beneath my soles and to admire buildings for the centuries they've endured and, for a change, to steep in a zeitgeist of political hope.

I only wish I could work for money and earn my keep.

"Nobody Care About Old People"

me: You know what I have noticed about the people of Prague?
Katie Cohan: What?
me: They’re very nice to their elderly.
Katie Cohan: That’s because they went through communism.

They went through the Nazis as well.

Last week, NYU in Prague had a film discussion about Fighter. It was made by a college student and it followed his 77-year-old professor as he retraced the steps of his harrowing escape from the Nazi-invaded and then communist-overrun Czech lands. Jan Weiner, the said professor and film's subject, came to present the film. [How cool?!!] I could write a synopsis for you, but I’ll direct you to a long version and a shorter version and a version so short-it does little justice.

The experiences of Weiner and his friend Arnost Lustig were altogether arresting. Though unique, they gave me the remarkable realization of the astonishing commonality that thread through their generation. Their wars make George W Bush’s war on terror seem like a game children would play during lunch recess – only the most fanciful imagination can make it seem noteworthy.

I also was struck by Weiner’s dexterity with language: Czech, German, Italian, English, and assuredly others – skills hardened by necessity. I wish Grandma was as multilingual – or that my skills in Chinese were more refined – and then maybe she could give me her personal account of communism’s arc to China. It’s strange how one man’s utopian ideals have crippled swaths of populations across the globe.

I was shopping at Tesco, the Czech urban mini-version of Wal-Mart sans hunting and fishing section, getting by on the multifunctional word prosim, akin to the Italian prego. Excuse me, please, thank you, pardon, can I have your number? = prosim. My entire time there was spent talking to my most fitfully pensive friend: myself. We had a very intense discussion to say the least.

How intrusive and displaced I felt, though reassured by the fact that this is a mere four month stint – and that I was attending university here, taking classes in English with other students who like me could navigate their way from Greenwich Village or SoHo to Central Park with their eyes closed. I am left with awed suppositions on the decades that have waxed for my English-less grandparents and their time in the United States.

Over the past break when it was just Grandma and me, she turned to me and said, “Nobody care about old people. You know?” I guess it would be easy to come to such a conclusion when your children go off to make their stake in the world – all the more so when your children are your most dear people who can speak your language.