{"id":2809,"date":"2019-09-23T14:16:53","date_gmt":"2019-09-23T14:16:53","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/?p=2809"},"modified":"2019-09-23T14:17:26","modified_gmt":"2019-09-23T14:17:26","slug":"the-devil-is-in-the-detail-waldsee-village-from-auschwitz-to-bemidji","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/the-devil-is-in-the-detail-waldsee-village-from-auschwitz-to-bemidji\/","title":{"rendered":"The Devil is in the Detail: Waldsee Village from Auschwitz to Bemidji"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

The following offers a recap, an update and another perspective to the Waldsee issue previously discussed in this blog 3\/25\/3019 by George Dalbo under the title \u201cMore than a name\u2026\u201d<\/g><\/a> .<\/g> <\/em>\u00a0The current author discovered the history of the Waldsee name and has remained actively engaged in the Concordia Language Village response. <\/p>\n\n\n\n\n\n\n\n

\u201cWe\nlearned that our journey\u2019s end was a place named Waldsee. When I was thirsty or\nhot, the promise contained in that name immediately invigorated me.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Trains\nto Waldsee<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

This\nexcerpt from Fatelessness<\/em> by the Hungarian Jewish author Imre Kertesz,\nholocaust survivor and winner of the 2002 Nobel Prize in Literature, does not\nreveal the awful truth of where the train would take him.  \u201cWaldsee\u201d, \n\u201cForest Lake\u201d in English, was the name used by the German SS to ensure\nsmooth transport of 440,000 Hungarian Jews to Auschwitz \u2013 Birkenau between May\n15 and July 9, 1944.  This was nearly\nhalf the total number of Jews murdered at the extermination camp. \u201cWhere are we\ngoing?\u201d fearful passengers might have asked as they were pressed into train\ncars. \u201cTo Waldsee\u201d came the soothing response. Once arrived, Hungarian Jews\nwere forced to write postcards to their families back home, reassuring them of\nsafe arrival. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Postcards\nfrom the edge<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u201cMy dearest ones, I feel fine. Hopefully you are\nall healthy. Please send an answer by postcard. When I\u2019m healthy, I think of\nyou a lot. \u201c So wrote Agnes Bamberger to her family in Budapest. Perpetuating\nthe fiction, the card was stamped with a specially manufactured postmark, \u201cWaldsee\u201d.  Agnes Bamberger was murdered in a gas chamber\nat Auschwitz. Her family\u2019s address was noted and passed along for the next\ntransport. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

At the other Waldsee, the German language camp in\nBemidji that uses the immersion method of language teaching, the postcard rack\nstands empty. \u201cWhy don\u2019t we sell postcards?\u201d the sign reads, then explains the\nhistory of the Waldsee postcards from Auschwitz.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Happening upon history<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I am not a scholar of the Shoah; I am not a trained\nhistorian of anything other than language. However, because of a recent connection\nwith Concordia\u2019s German Language Village in Bemidji, out of old habit, I put\nthe search term \u201cWaldsee + Nazi\u201d in my Internet browser\u2014what can I say, I\u2019m Jewish.\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Try it. All of the hits in some way reference the\nNazi ruse (George Dalbo\u2019s excellent blogpost<\/a> is one\nof them). <\/p>\n\n\n\n

With a sense of outrage, I wrote to Concordia\nLanguage Village\u2019s (CLV) Executive Director Christine Schultze about my\ndiscovery.  \u201cI can only assume that you\nknew of this and decided to keep the name anyway\u201d, I wrote. Schultze wrote back\nimmediately, \u201cWe were not aware\u2026\u201d More followed. I did not expect so\ncomprehensive a response. There was an advisory group formed. I was put on it.\nThere were meetings with alumni of CLV, current \u201cvillagers\u201d, parents, teachers,\nstaff, etc. Reactions were invited and then shared. A list of measures was decided on<\/a> and the advisory group was kept in the loop. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I was hooked. Things were happening, but not fast\nenough. Months would go without an update. I felt a sense of ownership of this\nlittle controversy and so I would write reminders to my contact at CLV and cc:\nmembers of the Advisory Committee, \u201cDear\u2026, I hope you are well. It has been \u2026\nmonths since the last update on progress with the measures committed to by\nCLV\u2026\u201d Soon after, there would be another update to the group. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Devil in the Detail<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

The Waldsee issue has become my private obsession.\nIs it really worth paying it so much attention? Of all the things to obsess\nabout, it is after all, just a name. If my concern is about anti-Semitism past,\npresent and future, surely there are larger and more relevant targets? <\/p>\n\n\n\n

And yet, this is my target. The opportunity to\noffer hundreds of students from all over the US safe entry into what continues\nto be the most taboo topic in German history is priceless. That I can continue\nto be involved in this opportunity is not just a private obsession, it is also,\na mission. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is a just a name, but the devil is in the\ndetail. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It\u2019s Personal<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n

I have a connection to the Shoah. My father was a\nrefugee from Dortmund, Germany during the summer of 1938. According to the Yad\nVashem list of Jews murdered in Auschwitz, three of my great-grandparents were\namong them. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Every Jew is touched in one way or another by the\nShoah. For me, it is in my blood, my nightmares and my unbidden tears.\nHappening upon the history of the Waldsee name didn\u2019t just affect me, it\npunched me in the gut. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

I suppose every educator who delves into the\nhorrors that humans visit upon each other struggles to balance outrage with\ncool academic rigor. I suppose what motivates any researcher of the Shoah is\nnot morbid fascination, but a sense of the precious opportunity to change the\nfuture by carefully documenting and teaching about the past. That at least is\nmy hope. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

It is just a name, but the devil is in the detail. For me, my motivation to continue watching Waldsee is, to paraphrase Michael Corleone, \u201cKeep your angels close and your devils closer\u201d.
I do.<\/g><\/p>\n\n\n\n

Alex Treitler has his BA and Masters from Columbia University. He has a second Masters from Uppsala University in Sweden. He is a translator and writer and runs his own business, <\/em>www.yourstoryshared.com<\/em><\/a>. <\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The following offers a recap, an update and another perspective to the Waldsee issue previously discussed in this blog 3\/25\/3019 by George Dalbo under the title \u201cMore than a name\u2026\u201d . \u00a0The current author discovered the history of the Waldsee name and has remained actively engaged in the Concordia Language Village response.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2081,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[142],"tags":[96805,96812,84862,96813],"class_list":["post-2809","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news","tag-auschwitz","tag-bemidji","tag-the-holocaust","tag-waldsee"],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2081"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2809"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2812,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2809\/revisions\/2812"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2809"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2809"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thesocietypages.org\/holocaust-genocide\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2809"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}