Stumbling On History

Stumbling On History

Juvenile/YA/adult nonfiction
"How we remember--not just what--shapes who we are. As individuals,
we find it difficult, when conscience tells us we've done wrong, to
face up, say we're sorry, and make amends. For an entire nation, it
is even harder to take the blame and make things right. When people
have committed terrible acts as a nation, how do they atone for these
acts and face their victims? Who speaks for a nation in apologizing--
even when not everyone is sorry? Whose job is it to honor the past?
And when should history be put behind us?"
These are questions Fern Schumer Chapman pursues on two levels
in Stumbling On History: An Art Project Compels A Small German Town
To Face Its Past. She skillfully weaves together two levels of
narrative. One is a town's atonement for the evils of Hitler's
Germany. The other is the very real meaning of this act to her
family's life.
Stumbling Stones was an art project designed to honor the dead
and displaced of the Holocaust. Bronze plaques with information about
them are set into sidewalks near where victims had lived. Since 1996
tens of thousands of them have been installed in Germany and other
countries.
"'This is a different way of teaching history,' Demnig [Gunther
Demnig, creator of the project] explains. 'Students open books and
read "eleven million people," and they can't imagine. It is an
abstract figure. With the stones these people come to life. Young
people say they would have played with [the victims'] children and
grandchildren.' In many towns students research the lives of those who
are memorialized and make presentations at the installation ceremonies."
Through the book Chapman and her mother, Edith Westerfeld
Schumer, are going to the installation ceremony in the small German
town of Stockstadt. It's the small town from which Edith's desperate
parents (whom she would never see again) had sent her to America on a
boat with other children in similar situations. On the plane over
Edith asks her daughter, "Who will remember? Fifty or a hundred years
from now, who will know this happened?"
On a personal note, Maine is stil gripped in an arctic chill.
According to the Bangor Daily News it's the coldest spell in 70
years. I've been staying in, writing and making significant progress
on my spring cleaning. But in a few minutes I'm putting on my party
clothes for a family get together at the in laws' in Winterport.
If you plan to party, please do responsibly.
If you're going to attend an outdoor gathering where they drop a ball
or lobster or something, dress to stay warm. There is nothing sexy
about frost bite. A hospital room is a pretty crappy place to start a
new year.
A great big shout out goes out to you, my readers with hope that 2018
will be full of hope and promise for us all.
jules hathaway


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