Simply Amazed!

I am simply amazed at all that is on this blog. There is no way I could view it all. I miss all of you -- our work together and fun times spent together. I will plan to post soon my final reflection -- where I celebrate each of you. Enjoy these weeks of summer.

: ) Valerie

P.S. I want to share two book titles with you -- not Holocaust-specific but related. The first is one I was reading while in NYC, Autobiography of a Face by Lucy Grealy, an Irish immigrant who, because of jaw cancer, undergoes surgery at age nine, which removes part of her face. What is more painful for her than the radiation, chemo, and numerous attempts at reconstructive surgery is how she's viewed, teased, ignored because of her looks. Unsurprisingly,Lucy internalizes this suffering as well.
The other book I'm currently reading is When She Was White by Judith Stone. This book really delves into the whole issue of race classification. One of the presenters talked about this at the Jewish Heritage Museum, and Gatsinzi talked about this with the Tutsis and Hutus. This book deals with this in the context of apartheid South Africa when a "coloured" child is born to a white couple. The racism, that supposedly isn't racism -- just protection of the child and her needs, is incredible. She is thrown out of her white boarding school, and her parents fight to keep her classification as "white," even when she is reclassified as "coloured." Of course, the obvious irony is that none of this would even be problematic if race classification were a non-issue.