Segen

The new Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie, Illinois opened today. I won a ticket lottery for the chance to witness their opening ceremonies. I was really happy to be a part of the dedication ceremony and in the last few days I read up on the Skokie museum in preparation for today. Through online print and speeches given today, I learned that Skokie had one of the highest populations of Holocaust survivors outside of Israel. Survivors settled in Skokie for many reasons – affordable, quiet suburbs with good schools, but most importantly, they were surrounded by people like themselves. One survivor said that she had no family left. In Skokie, she at least had people who understood her. Together, she was not alone. Think about that for a moment.

Today’s ceremony was awash with big headliner names. President Obama, Secretary of State Clinton, and the President of Israel spoke via satellite and President Clinton headlined the event giving a speech about genocide – with particular focus on the Holocaust, Rwanda, and the Balkans.

Despite the impressive ranks of the aforementioned speakers, the speakers who impacted me the most were the survivors themselves. They put a living face to the stories of millions of dead. One of the speakers was part of the initial group who conceived of the Holocaust Museum idea. Relocating to Skokie after the war, this gentleman became very involved with other survivors in his area. He and his contemporaries started to talk about their experiences and teach others about the Holocaust. Through their stories and teachings, these survivors touched other community members and a core group of dedicated people emerged to share survivors’ stories with a greater audience. Through the efforts of this devoted group, the Museum project came to life. This particular speaker’s name escapes me, as I have now lost the program, but his message was strangely positive for such a somber day. He was almost so positive that it seemed out of place. After thinking about this, I realized that today’s museum opening is quite a positive thing to be celebrating. The subject matter is of course hard to comprehend from a humanity standpoint, but the chance for these survivors to be heard and to educate others is such a gift. This is probably why the latter, but prominent half of the Museum’s name is “Education Center”.

And education and knowledge are key. The second speaker that impacted me, Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, spoke of his time in a concentration camp. He said the Holocaust started to boil over into his native Hungary quite late in the war, but that Hungarians had been left in the dark about the “final solution”. It was 1944 that Nazis entered his village and started to deport Jews. He said had they known the fate that would await them at the concentration camps, these Hungarian Jews would have fled. Elie Wiesel repeated, had they known, they would have left. He scolded the Western media, in particular the New York Times, for putting reports of concentration death camps on inner pages of their newspapers and not the front cover. Had they taken the camps as seriously as they should have at the time, the New York Times could have influenced other media and the word could have gotten out to a lot more people and perhaps saved more lives. The Hungarian townspeople simply did not know. This makes me feel horrible about the lack of media coverage in other genocides or mass killings – namely Cambodia, Rwanda, and Darfur.

Information is so powerful – and in Dr. Wiesel’s and other Holocaust victims and survivors’ cases, a matter of life and death. Given the age of most of the survivors, time has become a pressing issue in terms of sharing information about the Holocaust. What is special about this museum is that we thankfully can dedicate it during the lifetimes of survivors, but as the Holocaust falls father into our history and we lose survivors to old age, their stories are lost with them. Now is the time to get involved if you care to learn about, understand, and stand up against these types of atrocities. I strongly recommend you visit the Museum and meet survivors in the Education Center while you can.

Every time I check the New York Times, I confront an advertisement for animal rights.  There are two rotating ads–one with a bear whose teeth have been ripped out and is attacked by vicious dogs for the excitement of the people who put bets on which animals will win.  The other ad is of an emaciated dog tethered to a short chain.

A forthcoming scientific report says that pollutants in our water, air, food, and household products have “gender-bending” effects for animals and humans.  Scientists have seen a remarkable trends in the feminizing of males.

Highlights from this article addressing the topic:

“Baby boys born to women exposed to widespread chemicals in pregnancy are born with smaller penises and feminized genitals.”

“Half the male fish in British lowland rivers have been found to be developing eggs in their testes; in some stretches all male roaches have been found to be changing sex in this way.”

“Male alligators exposed to pesticides in Florida have suffered from lower testosterone and higher oestrogen levels, abnormal testes, smaller penises and reproductive failures. Male snapping turtles have been found with female characteristics in the same state and around the Great Lakes, where wildlife has been found to be contaminated with more than 400 different chemicals. Male herring gulls and peregrine falcons have produced the female protein used to make egg yolks, while bald eagles have had difficulty reproducing in areas highly contaminated with chemicals.”

“Two-thirds of male Sitka black-tailed deer in Alaska have been found to have undescended testes and deformed antler growth, and roughly the same proportion of white-tailed deer in Montana were discovered to have genital abnormalities.”

“At the other end of the world, hermaphrodite polar bears – with penises and vaginas – have been discovered and gender-benders have been found to reduce sperm counts and penis lengths in those that remained male.”

What are examples of “gender bending” chemicals?

• Polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs)
• Pesticides
• Flame Retardants
• Phthalates (plasticising chemicals)
• Organochlorines
• Dioxins
• Alkylphenols

In what products are these chemicals found?

• Cosmetics, shampoos, and toiletry products
• Cleaning products
• Pesticides, insecticides, herbicides
• Plastics
• Processed food
• Pharmaceuticals
• Chemicals for industrial use

This scares me. ~Segen

One thing I learned from living in Europe is that Europeans are much more comfortable with nudity than Americans. You see people in the buff on bus placards, magazines, daytime television, soft-core porn at night, the newspaper, and even at sporting events. What is even more striking is that you regularly see naked people in public parks—and older age or low fitness levels are not reasons to cover up or to be bashful at all. Even more interesting to me as an American who changed into her gym clothes in a stall to avoid showing any skin is the complete ease of being fully nude around family members and friends. I’ll never forget picking up a German friend’s family photo album and seeing her mom, dad, sisters, friends, and neighbors in a group shot with everything, and I mean everything, exposed. Even more shocking was to see my friend’s mom walk around their house without clothes on. Needless to say, I felt uncomfortable at first.

Many Europeans accept nudity as natural. Many Europeans also say that nudity and sex on television is totally okay. Sex is human. Bodies are ordinary—even naked ones. They do not understand Americans preoccupation of censoring all nudity on TV, while Americans allowing so much violence on television. (Child movie censors in Europe censor for violence, not nudity, while in the US, it is often the reverse. The movie “Chronicles of Narnia” in Germany is rated equivalent to the US’s PG13). The European illustration about TV censorship makes sense to me. Why DO we care so much about nudity? Why DO I feel bashful about being in the buff around others? Why wouldn’t I trust my friends and family to see me naked?

I think my shame of being nude stems from our culture. But why is it shameful to be nude in our culture? Why is it in some cases illegal to be nude in our culture? I’m tired of being prude. And I just decided that I will walk from the shower to my room in the morning without clothes or a towel on regardless of what the members of my household think.

It was amazing to see so much graffiti in Berlin, especially considering that the prevailing stereotype of Germany is that it is a meticulously clean and orderly country. I shouldn’t have been surprised by the graffiti in Berlin, however, because of the rich history of graffiti on the Berlin Wall. The western side of the Berlin Wall was a gigantic slate for Berlin’s creative counterculture to express themselves for nearly three decades. When the wall fell, the graffiti artists sought new canvases to bomb on sides of buildings, subway seats, street signs, doorways, mailboxes, boats, and almost any other surface you can dream up.

Berlin is an ever-evolving city of culture. Streetscapes, architecture, and fashion are constantly changing. It was truly a pleasure to walk outside my DDR-style apartment building each morning to discover a freshly painted piece of art to ponder for the day.

For more information about Berlin’s street art, check out this New York Times video, the following books, or my online photo album.