Week 13: Pureness

This week, my faith in humanity was restored and I was reminded of how innocent and blind children are to race and discrimination. We received a letter in our employee break room from a mother and her 10 year old daughter, Maya. Maya was reading a book and did not understand the word Nazi. She proceeded to ask her mom what it was and her mom gave her a quick lesson on the Holocaust. Maya was fascinated by this and proclaimed that there should be a museum dedicated to the Holocaust and her mother told her about us. Now Maya happened to be a girl scout and told her mom that she would like to send the museum cookies to brighten our days. “It would be pretty sad to see that; it would be nice if they could have some free cookies after.” Today was the best morning to receive those cookies because today was the first day of a long weekend of storms. After having a few days of beautiful sunny weather, we were greeted this morning with thunder and a downpour of rain. Already being a pitiful start to the day and having to be out in the rain to pass out museum tickets, hearing that there were girl scout cookies in the staff room was the greatest news. And then reading the letter written by Maya and her mom was the icing on the cake. Maya’s pure heart could be felt by everyone.

Besides having the great pleasure of receiving that letter, I was able again to participate in another First Person event. This time around, the survivor was Irene Weiss, an Auschwitz survivor. Irene was 13 years old when her, her parents and her five siblings were transferred to Auschwitz from Czechoslovakia. In Czechoslovakia, under Hungarian ,occupation, Irene's hair was shaved when her and her family were moved to a nearby ghetto. Although, Irene attributes this to her survival in Auschwitz becuase during the selection process her mother and younger siblings were sent one way and her and her older sister were sent the other. Unbeknownst at the time, her mother and siblings were sent to the gas chambers, but the scarf worn on her head made her seem older than 13 and therefore the SS officer directed her with the older women. Her father was put in charge of transferring the bodies into the crematorium and was killed after three months of this work. What I did not know was that every three months they usually killed theses workers because the work becomes too much for the men to handle and eventually makes them mentally incapable of continuing. Her father was one of those men. Her sister survived until liberation in 1945, yet died shortly afterwards from starvation and illness. Irene was a lively woman though, and thanked me for assisting with her talk. She said I was important to her because I would go on to retell her story and therefore her family will be remembered through history long after she was dead. So that is what I am doing; retelling her story for all nine of you who actually read this blog. Below is a picture of me complimenting Irene on her fantastic outfit and scarf.

I am using this space to write what was said in Maya's letter because it was so sweet and beautiful. It is written out just as she wrote it, so I'm sorry for the fourth grade sentence structure. 

Hi my name is Maya Simons and I am reading Magic Tree House "Danger in the Darkest Hour" (World War II). Holocaust, Hitler, all the people that died. It made me feel really really bad. I thought eating cookies after seeing something sad cookies might make people feel better. 💗"

True pureness and innocence.