United Methodist Women

I was scheduled to give a 20-minute talk to our UMW group, 10 am this morning. This is a group of 15-20 older women, two of whom have husbands who are retired pastors. Our pastor attends these monthly meetings as well. We have a great time drinking coffee, eating fruit and homemade coffee cake, and chatting.

We have a short business meeting, then an inspirational talk, and finally that month's program, which is usually taken from a book with suggested topics, hymns to sing, and a message to convey.

Having finished my Ferrum College Holocaust class, I decided to break with tradition and discuss the class and how I feel it has changed my life. I also emphasized the need for the women in that room, all of them of an age to remember World War II and what they had eventually heard about the Holocaust, to make certain their children and their grandchildren knew about what horrible events occurred in the name of "ethnic cleansing." Several mentioned a desire to visit the Holocaust Museum in DC; I told them that a visit by tour bus to DC (over 4 hours from us) and to the museum was part of my class.

I handed around my journal, complete with picture postcards I'd taped inside so they could see the piles of bluish gray shoes left by the victims, the tower of pictures that reaches three stories (all pictures from a woman whose grandfather had been the town photographer in a small town in Poland)..baby pictures, wedding pictures, anniversary pictures, graduation pictures, in color, in sepia tones, in black and white. Everyone in that town had been put to death by the Nazis.

I had worried that this group of elderly women might not appreciate being reminded of such horrible crimes, but they were enthusiastic, questioning, absolutely supportive of my talk. Several want to take the class next year, especially when I told them Ferrum allows students over age 65 to attend for no cost, the reading materials are all available at our Franklin County Library (or in inexpensive paperback), the bus tour is a field trip, sponsored by a synagogue in Roanoke; in fact, the only cost I incurred was $15 for a parking decal. Since the college is only 11 miles from Rocky Mount, the distance traveled is negligible.

Ending the talk on a positive note, I told them about Irena Sendler, a 97-year-old Catholic woman in Warsaw who saved 2,500 children from death by hiding them, one-by-one, in potato sacks, even in coffins, often sedated, and getting them out of the Warsaw Ghetto, changing their names and placing them with foster families, or getting families to hide them away. She put together lists of the childrens' real names and changed names, stashed the lists into jars, and then buried the jars. Her story, about the four young Kansas schoolgirls who took on a research project to find her, is at http://www.irenasendler.org/ Amazing story of what one woman was able to do.

Beginning my talk by displaying a copy of Sarah's Key by Tatiana de Rosnay, the book that began this odyssey for me, and then passing the book around the room, I noticed many took note of the name. One woman said she intends to e-mail her California daughter, who is always looking for interesting books for her Book Club to read.

It appears I need not have worried; these women, even an 88-year old sweetheart, were intrigued and passionately involved in the topic.