On Austrian Soil

Sondra Perl

Description

Finalist for the 2006 Independent Publishers Book Award in the Autobiography/Memoir category

Most educators keep their teaching secret. In On Austrian Soil, an award-winning teacher, Sondra Perl, opens her classroom to reveal the struggles and successes she encounters when she, not without trepidation, raises the questions of history with her adult Austrian students, descendants of Nazis. Her students, teachers themselves, come face-to-face with the question of their responsibility not only to the past but also to the future. Perl's careful descriptions are an invitation to scrutinize her teaching and thinking as well as her students' own histories and hatreds. Writing together, she and her students break lifelong silences—discovering along the way the power of dialogue to transform deeply held prejudices.

Author's Note on Names and Language

Introduction: The Road to Dialogue

1. A Simple Invitation

2. History Becomes Real

3. Interlude: Fall-Winter 1996-1997

4. A Second Course, A Second Inquiry

5. Whipped by the Wind

6. Interlude: Winter-Spring 1997

7. A Dialogue in Letters

8. Unexpected Lessons

9. Uncommon Ground

10. The Question of Forgiveness

11. When the Wind Whispers

Epilogue: On American Soil

Acknowledgments

Notes

Bibliography

Sujets

• Éducation
• Education
• The Holocaust

Informations

• Publié par: State University of New York Press
• Date de parution: 01 février 2012
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9780791483596
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 1 Mo

Extrait

O N ArTAiNuS SiOL Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate

SondraPerl

On Austrian Soil

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On Austrian Soil

Teaching Those I Was Taught to Hate

Sondra Perl

State University of New York Press

The cover photo shows the Hungarian Monument to the Hoocaust erected in 1964 at the Mauthausen Memoria Site at the Mauthausen Concentration Camp on the outskirts of Linz, Austria.

Cover photo by Gert Fesser, used by permission.

Pubished by State University of New York Press, Abany

© 2005 State University of New York

A rights reserved

Printed in the United States of America

No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission. No part of this book may be stored in a retrieva system or transmitted in any form or by any means incuding eectronic, eectrostatic, magnetic tape, mechanica, photocopying, recording, or otherwise without the prior permission in writing of the pubisher.

For information, address the State University of New York Press, 90 State Street, Suite 700, Abany, NY 12207

Production by Judith Bock Marketing by Fran Keneston

Library of Congress CataloginginPublication Data

Per Sondra. On Austrian soi : teaching those I was taught to hate / Sondra Per. p. cm. Incudes bibiographica references. ISBN 0-7914-6389-3 (hardcover) — ISBN 0-7914-6390-7 (pbk.) 1. Per, Sondra—Reations with Austrian students. 2. Jews, American— Austria—Innsbruck—Biography. 3. Coege teachers—United States— Biography. 4. Jewish coege teachers—Austria—Innsbruck—Biography. 5. Teaching—Case studies. 6. Engish anguage—Rhetoric—Study and teaching. 7. Composition (Language arts)—Study and teaching (Higher) 8. Hoocaust, Jewish (1939–1945) 9. Intercutura communication. 10. Students—Austria—Attitudes. I. Tite.

DS135.A93P497 2005 943.6'424004924073—dc22

10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

2004007554

For Sara, Josh, Sam, and Cara May you carry this legacy lightly

The author wishes to thank the foowing peope and pubishers for permission to reprint copyrighted materia: Thomas Lux for “The Voice You Hear When You Read Sienty” pubished by The New Yorker, Juy 14, 1997. Reprinted by permission of Thomas Lux.

Cara Fesser for permission to print her photographs of Innsbruck buidings and monuments taken in 2002.

Yae University Press for four ines from Charotte Debo, Rosette C. Lamont, transator, fromAuschwîtz and After,1995, p. 12. Reprinted by permission of Yae University Press.

The Rabbinica Assemby for the seection by Rabbi Cyrus Ader fromSabbath and Festîval Prayer Book,1946, p. 304. Reprinted by permission of the Rabbinica Assemby.

The Stadtarchiv/Stadtmuseum for two photographs of Innsbruck fromInnsbruck 1938–1945.Reprinted by permission of the Stadtarchiv/Stadtmuseum, Innsbruck, Austria.

Portions of chapters 1 and 2 originay appeared as “Facing the Other: The Emergence of Ethics and Sefhood in a Cross-Cutura Writing Cassroom” from Narratîon as Knowledge: Tales of the Teachîng Lîfe,edited by Joseph Trimmer, 1997. (Heinemann-Boynton/Cook, a subsidiary of Reed Esevier Inc., Portsmouth, NH, 1997.) Copyright hed by Sondra Per.

The image of the Hoocaust iswîth us—a memory which haunts, a sounding board for a subsequent evi—in the back of the mind . . . for a of us now iving: we, the inheritors.

Terrence Des Pres,Treblînka, viii

❧

We need to ook cosey at the border where our empathy ends; there our potentia for cruety begins.

Anne Roiphe,A Season for Healîng,21

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Contents

Author’s Note on Names and Language Introduction The Road to Diaogue 1 A Simpe Invitation 2 History Becomes Rea 3 Interude: Fa–Winter 1996–1997 4 A Second Course, a Second Inquiry 5 Whipped by the Wind 6 Interude: Winter–Spring 1997 7 A Diaogue in Letters 8 Unexpected Lessons 9 Uncommon Ground 10 The Question of Forgiveness 11 When the Wind Whispers

Epiogue Acknowedgments Notes Bibiography

On American Soi

ix

xi xiii 1 17 33 39 71 105 129 155 179 197 203

213 219 223 227