Healing acts of kindness
Four Clark students studying the Holocaust and genocide share accounts of their summer internship experiences.
By Tammy Griffin-Kumpey, M.S.P.C. '06
Clark’s Strassler Family Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies provides students from a variety of majors with opportunities outside the classroom to study the phenomenon of genocide. Committed to providing rich learning experiences to undergraduates, the center has been offering Holocaust and Genocide Studies ( hgs) summer internship stipends since 1999. With this support, made possible by the Arthur and Rochelle Belfer Fund, the Debra I. ’77 and Jeffrey A. ’76 Geller Fund, and the Ina R. and Haskell R. (m.b.a. ’74) Gordon Fund, students have studied a variety of topics and interned at many different institutions across the nation and around the world. This past summer, four hgs summer interns—three of them supported with stipends—learned first-hand about the complexity of hatred and healing.
Guerrilla medicine
Out the door by 6:45…a long walk through not-yet-awakened streets to a big yellow church, where I caught the ‘chicken bus’ to work. The chicken buses, famous in Guatemala, are so nicknamed because on these old U.S.-style school buses converted to public buses, one encounters chickens, vegetables, electronics or any other item en masse being transported to various marketplaces. A wild, curvy ride for 20 minutes, out of the center city and into the countryside, watching the dress slowly change from North American-style street clothes to traditional Mayan dress, ” recalls Jesse Mattleman ’11, describing the start of a typical day for her while interning at Primeros Pasos in Quetzaltenango, Guatemala, this summer.
Primeros Pasos is a nongovernment organization that provides free health care and education to the area ’s underserved Mayan children and families. During Guatemala’s vicious 36-year civil war, indigenous Mayans were subjugated, isolated and treated inhumanely, explains Mattleman. Rural areas were especially hit hard, and government-supported massacres of indigenous people were not uncommon during the war ’s most brutal years. Mattelman says the government turned a blind eye to the needs of these “off-the-map” populations. Thus access to healthcare is not a reality for many of them.
Mattleman first became interested in serving the health interests of this population during her gap-year experience before coming to Clark. Working in a Guatemala City orphanage, she noticed that many of the children had health problems, which ranged from physical disabilities to malnutrition to mental handicaps. Yet, few received treatment.
“I began to wonder: Had any of these kids ever seen a doctor? If they lived in the United States, or Europe, or somewhere with more modern medical facilities, would they suffer as they do here? ”
Although the war ended in 1996 and steps are being taken to support and rebuild communities ravaged by violence and discrimination, Mattleman says many of the basic services promised to indigenous Guatemalans through the Peace Accords of 1996 have not materialized. The 10 communities that Primeros Pasos serves, for example, have no government-funded health clinic in their area. Intestinal parasites due to lack of potable water, limited access to birth control and general OB/GYN services, infections due to unsanitary living conditions, and respiratory diseases thanks to indoor cooking fires, although largely preventable, are promulgated by lack of basic social, medical and economic support systems.
“Primeros Pasos is run entirely by students, be they foreign volunteers or medical students from the local university. It runs on an annual budget of $30,000 and offers free and low-cost medications and health services. Because Primeros Pasos runs on such a small budget, all employees have a second job or are lucky enough to have grant money behind them, ” writes Mattleman in her blog. “Talk about guerrillas is usually limited to the civil war in Guatemala, but Primeros Pasos really is a guerrilla medicine operation, storming communities and abandoned concrete offices to set up shop. It repairs genocide, parasites and detrimental medical myths by empowering people through providing health services. ”
Mattelman’s “guerrilla tactics” ranged from hiking to various communities to deliver prescriptions, analyzing stool samples in the laboratory for intestinal parasites and teaching health-education classes, to training other volunteers and playing soccer with kids waiting for exams.
“I’m inspired by everyone I met in my work: Guatemalan doctors working for little pay in dangerous neighborhoods, foreign volunteers giving up their summer, winter and spring breaks to serve those most in need, kids playing soccer barefoot in the dirt despite parasites growing in their bellies, babies born in concrete buildings against all odds of survival. I am so lucky to be healthy, educated, traveled. I feel as though I ’m not doing enough to help, enough to serve, enough to express my gratitude for the incredible situation I was simply born into, ” she says.
Mattelman asserts that the most important lesson learned from her experiences in Guatemala is that formal schooling is only a part of becoming educated. She is thankful that Clark is committed to supporting these life-changing educational opportunities for students.
“Going to Guatemala with your best friend, with a vague idea of an internship, finding an apartment, building a life, staying romantic and idealistic —not because I always felt like it, but because that was the only way to be, pushing through days that I just felt like sobbing, and finding beauty and energy in the roughness of life in the developing world is arguably more of an educational experience than any of my schooling to date.”
Remembering the past
This summer, Lindsay Danforth ’09 interned at the Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center in Springfield, Mass., where she catalogued artifacts so the center could begin the process of applying for museum accreditation. During her time at Hatikvah, Danforth cataloged about 1,500 artifacts, including pictures, newspaper clippings, birth certificates, passports and armbands worn by prisoners and Nazis.
Hatikvah Holocaust Education Center is designed not only to teach individuals about the Holocaust, says Danforth, but about the effects of hate and prejudice on society as well.
Danforth says that she has always been fascinated by the Holocaust—she started learning about it at an early age and recalls childhood class field trips to Hatikvah. Perhaps this fascination was stimulated by her personal connection to the Holocaust; many members of her extended family perished during the atrocities, she says. In her search for deeper knowledge and understanding, Danforth has visited Holocaust museums and memorials worldwide, including the Museum of Jewish Heritage in New York, the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., and Yad Vashem in Israel. Last summer, Danforth participated in the Prague/Terezin study-abroad program offered through Clark.
A psychology major with a minor in Holocaust and genocide studies, Danforth says that she is very interested in exploring how exposure to violence affects one ’s mental health. Her goal is to work with violence-prevention programs for children and young adults.
“Being able to handle artifacts from World War II has added another dimension to learning about the Holocaust and, in a sense, has made it more real for me, ” says Danforth. “I think that the most important lesson that I learned from this experience is that if we cannot understand and remember the past, then we are doomed to repeat it in the future. ”
“I have had the opportunity to handle actual artifacts from World War II, which is a privilege that most college students don ’t get the chance to do. I am so thankful for this opportunity that Clark has given me — I couldn’t have asked for a better internship.”
Hope among ruins According to government and international relations major Sarah Richard ’11, while the destruction of Lidice, Czech Republic, happened more than 60 years ago, people in the area acutely remember the tragic event as if it had happened yesterday. The village was completely destroyed and the few survivors were relocated to concentration camps with the exception of three children who were sent to families abroad for Germanization. Only a handful of the women and children from the original village are still alive and living in the new village.
Although she did not receive a stipend, Richard interned this summer with the Lidice Museum and Memorial in Lidice, Czech Republic. There, she assisted English-speaking museum visitors, answered questions about the history of the museum and town, led outdoor tours of the museum grounds and its memorial site, and helped set up and break down many exhibits and events. During the week of the Lidice memorial service and Televag exhibit opening, Richard served as the liaison to English-speaking ambassadors as well as foreign guests. The museum, she infers, is a memorial built up from a grain of hope among the ruins.
“The Lidice tragedy is still very much part of this community’s every day lives,” explains Richard. Major rehabilitation and assistance came years later in the form of donations to the museum, she says, so the museum serves as a means of emotional support for many of the victims. “Working at the museum made me realize that even decades after such an atrocity, the pain and the problems still exist; people are still healing. ”
“The World War II era was such a fascinating period of time due to the major governmental changes and actions taking place, particularly in Europe. I heard about Lidice through the HGS department and thought that they had a very important story to share. While the Lidice tragedy isn ’t very well known in the United States, I hoped to bring knowledge of this event back to my home country, ” she says.
“This experience has taught me not only about the history of World War II and the Lidice tragedy, but also of the many similar tragedies in villages and cities around the world throughout history. Studying a tragedy such as this and realizing the consequences makes you rethink certain ideas that you may have about war. War doesn ’t only affect the soldiers, but innocent civilians.”
“This internship taught me amazing communication skills that I wouldn’t have gotten anywhere else,” says Richard. Since her supervisor and co-workers spoke extremely limited English, she relied on her knowledge of Czech and hand gestures to communicate daily in the workplace. “While lack of communication was my greatest struggle while abroad, I found that sometimes words aren ’t the most important means of communicating. Watching the women of Lidice tell their story defied language barriers. ”
Healing and forgiveness Bosnia was the site of a brutal war and genocide in the 1990s. The country still has serious economic challenges. The unemployment rate is 40% and a large segment of the population lives in poverty. The infrastructure remains damaged and rebuilding efforts have stagnated, ” says international development and social change major Margaret Kettles ’11. In Bosnia, years of war and ethnic tension among the three Bosnian ethnic groups —Bosniak, Serb and Croat—have left thousands of children orphaned because their parents were either killed or so traumatized that they could no longer care for their families.
This summer, Kettles interned for two organizations in Mostar, Bosnia: Training Workshops International for the Children (TWI) and Bosnia International Servant Trip (IST). TWI provides programs and workshops for teachers and caregivers, educational support through scholarship programs and international-study opportunities for Bosnian students, summer camps for children, and assistance to special-needs children. IST provides “friendship camps,” designed to bring healing, hope and peace to the children of Bosnia by teaching acceptance and diversity-awareness skills. Its workshops often provide the first positive contact with people of different ethnic groups for these children.
“The biggest challenge facing Bosnia, in my opinion, is the segregation that exists between the ethnic groups, ” asserts Kettles.
According to Kettles, the segregation in Bosnia runs deep. For example, Serbian children are not taught about the concentration camps that were once located in their towns and may have been run by their parents. In Mostar, children attend school at different times of day depending if they are Croatian or Bosniak. In Jajce, Bosnia, Bosniak students are not permitted to sit in chairs used by Croatian students, and Croatian students are not taught in Bosniak classrooms.
“This segregation prevents the new generations of Bosnians from seeing beyond ethnic lines, from learning about and from the recent history of their country, and from dealing with the difficult reintegration process necessary to make the country whole. It prevents healing and forgiveness, ” she says. The IST friendship camps, led by Americans and Bosnians from all three ethnic groups, were a step toward blurring the lines of separation.
In the TWI orphanage where Kettles worked, she notes that the basic needs of the children often are not met. The orphanage has no hot water and nutritious meals are not always available. Because caretakers are overworked, the children do not get the attention that they so desperately need; and those with special needs are often overlooked as caretakers struggle to meet the needs of those with more severe disabilities.
Kettles taught English classes in the mornings and spent the afternoons tutoring, helping with homework, and playing with the children. Because she lived on site unlike the official caretakers, she had more time to spend with the kids, who began to thrive on the attention and look up to her.
“Bosnia needs so much – not just in international aid dollars, but in a continued international presence working for healing and forgiveness, ” says Kettles. “My time in Bosnia has given me perspective.”
“I think the most important lesson I have learned from this internship is that human-rights work and international development do not have to focus on implementing policy change or making infrastructure improvements. Positive change can be enacted simply by working with individuals and children to change attitudes and teach skills. ”
Learn more about the Strassler Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at www.clarku.edu/departments/holocaust
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