Visiting Sachsenhousen Concentration Camp in Germany

Visiting this concentration camp was very moving to me since I was in prison El Salvador during the Civil War and my husband is Jewish and his uncle was in a German concentration camp, too. The minute I walked through the gate, I felt goose pimples just to think about all the suffering that the prisoners endured in this terrible camp. Can you imagine that at the end as the Soviet army approached the camp, the prisoners were forced to march to the Baltic Sea to get on the boats to be thrown in the sea. During the walk many prisoners died of exhaustion or cold. This was the first camp to be built in 1936 and used as a model for the other camps under the supervision of SS Heinrich Himmler as chief of the German Police in 1936. More than 200,000 people were in this Sachsenhousen Concentration camp between 1936 and 1945 and about half perished. First, this camp was used for political prisoners, but the Germans soon started to send prisoners defined as racially or biological inferior. What is interesting to me is how they portrayed the Jews as stereotypes shown in Nazi publications with bald heads and big noses. Yet, many Germans have a big nose and Hitler himself didn't look like the so called Arian race, Hitler had dark hair, and brown eyes. My mother in-law told me that she used to work in a clothing store and the Germans came and destroyed the store. They didn't do anything to her and let her go because she had blue grey eyes and fair skin.
Education is so important in the world to become aware of the significance of these terrible events; unfortunately, it wasn't covered in my educational experience in El Salvador. I went to a private high school and the University of El Salvador, Central America and I never was taught about the genocide of the Jews during the second World War.

So in reality Hitler used the Jews as scapegoats and used as a pretext the
biological features of the Jews to kill then. I empathize with the prisoners in this camp since they were at the mercy of the German soldiers and they had the guns to control them. I was in prison myself so I know that it is a nightmare and that we can be killed any minute since we don't have power to defend ourselves. Like in this camp prisoners suffered so much torture, humiliation, hunger, and deprivation. I know what it is to be isolated and not be part of the society.
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It is sad to me that the world and goverments didn't learn from this horrible genocide since there had been other genocides such as Darfort, Bosnia, and Rhuanda.
I remembered when I took a course in San Francisco State University that the teacher posed some questions about what can we do to prevent another genocide in the world. Most of us said that it was important to be active and vigilant of our government's actions and speak out against injustice.

Our friends who live in Schwerin, Germany were really nice and one of them told me that their parents told her that they didn't know what Germany was doing to the Jewish people. You don't see too many German flags around; I got the impression that many Germans feel ahamed of their country's past.

The Loris Malaguzzi International Centre Centro Internazionalle Loris Mallaguzzy

The highlight of my trip was to visit the Loris Mallaguzzy International Centre, which promotes the Reggio Emilia approach to early childhood development that we have been implementing at my children's center in San Francisco. I had the opportunity to meet Sara Ferrari who works in the center. She gave a me a tour of the exhibition and explained to me the history of the centro and the different activities that take place here. The exhibition reflects the beautiful work that the children, the teachers, the atelierista, and the community do in the city of Reggio Emilia. The atelierista works together with the teacher to prepare activities that invites children to discover or expand on their knowledge.

The Reggio Emilia approach emphasizes the interests of the children by developing a curriculum from observing the children and reflecting and analyzing the documentation based on the observations. This approach emphasizes children's creativity.

The exhibition begins with a display tracing attitudes towards children and the different stages of educational programs for children in Italy and offered by the city of Reggio Emilia from the beginning of the nineteenth century up to the present. The exhibit puts this in historical context interspacing world events of interest with the historical progression of Italy and the city of Reggio Emilia.

I was astonished to see an exhibition of the Movement and Time Project that they are showing and that we have worked on in our children's center. I love the comments of the children and admire the community participation involved.

I was also very impressed with the light room designed to provoke the children's imagination to encourage them to explore. This room was created by an architect hired by the city with the cooperation of the atelerista, the teacher and the community. The atelerista is a specialist, usually an artist of some kind, who works together with the teacher, the children and the community. This a Meta Project that the atelierista is working on with children ages one to 19 years old. Here children have the opportunity to explore and discover light. The ateliarista has set up a room with many different colors of light and different shapes. The minute one walks through the tunnel the soft lights give one a calm sensation; there is vibration and sensation about the light and the soft colors that makes one feel relaxed. Next, there are four small tables with different kinds of mirrors, and there are three different colors that the children can work with and discover light in different dimensions. In this area the children can discover what happens when they put together different colors such as combining green and yellow to make a reflection of blue light. On another table there are three clear containers with water and three big lights hanging from the ceiling which reflect into the water creating white bins of light. The dark room has phosphorecent soft lights, purple and white, and mirrors. At the end of the exhibitions there are strips of colored paper to draw on the desk; there were bright colors with sparkles and other materials that reflect light for the children to construct different kinds of things. Unfortunally, taking pictures inside the center is not allow, so I have only posted a few pictures of the city and outside of the center.


I want to mention that the director of my children center, Zaida Rodriguez, who recently passed away was responsible for implementing the Reggio Emilia Appoach curriculum in our center. Zaida was dedicated to providing high quality Early Childhood Education for the children. She was always trying to find money available to provide professional development workshops for the staff at our children center to enchance the teachers knowledge. We will miss her dearly.

Florence

Florence is the best place to admire and see the best architectural master pieces that were created between 1200 and 1500 ad.There are so many old churches with beautiful decorations, scultures and paintings. The magnificent Basilica de Santa Maria (Duomo) was built in 1246 by three architectects monks. This super master piece basilica with green and white marble was finished during the Renaissance period by Leon Battista Aberti. Another masterpiece is the Basilica de Santa Crose which leads you to Via Dante De Aligheri who was the father of the Italian language. Dante also wrote la Divina Comedia. There is also the Aligheri tower and the museum which was built in the 20th century. There are many beautiful piazzas all over Florence with beautiful scultures from the Renaissance period. There are astounding works that Michael Angello did and some other painters like him during this time.
Firenze was hot and very expensive. Here the hotel cost 93 Euros. For us this was expensive so we stayed only one day.

Lemon activity at the Piazza in Monterroso

When we were in Monterroso, I saw a beautiful project that the children were having in the piazza. The children, parents and teachers were selling lemonade, lemon cake, lemon jam and lemon candies. They had in the piazza a lemon tree with the pictures that the children had drawn. It was really nice to see this project. Children were dressed in yellow and were singing a song about lemons. I asked the children if I could speak with the teacher, but the teacher wasn’t available. I wanted to know about the curriculum, but unfortunately there was only one teacher couldn’t talk to me because she was too busy setting up.I wanted to know if they are implementing the Reggio Emilia approach curriculum that we are working on in my children's center in Sand Francisco.

I love Sapri

Sapri has been a very relaxing little town for us, especially for my husband who got sick. Every morning for the past three days we have been going out of town and taken the local bus or train to visit Maratera and Scario. Maratera is a beautiful old town on the hills with narrow streets and Scario lies along the beach. Both towns are about a thousand years old according to the local people. I have enjoyed the seafood, the salads, the bread, the wine and the ice-cream Mama Mia todo muy rico. This morning we went hiking here in Sapri and then swimming in the Meditarean Sea. I wanted to stop the time and just be inside the aqua colored water. We are staying in a hotel which is facing the blue sea and in front of a nice small park.

I have met a few immigrants from Romania here in Sapri who asked me for money and told me that life here was very hard. Also in Roma, I was asked for money, I thought that Italy didn't have homeless since it is a powerful country. Of course the United States has homeless people and it is a powerful country. Another problem is graffiti I see it everywhere, and it looks so ugly on a few of the old buildings.

Cimqueterre Mama Mia Molto Bello

After a long train journey,we arrived in La Spezia, Italy, a small city on the Italian Meditarenean coast about 90 miles east of Genoa. La Spezia has a beautiful location tucked between coastal mountains and the sea. It lies close to a rugged coastal area called Cinque Terre, a UNESCO protected area in which there are five old villages perched along the cliffs overlooking the sea. We took the train to the beginning of the trail that connects the villages the first village Monterroso al Mare, Vernaza, Corniglia, Manarola and finally, Riomaggiore(there is no road)and we hiked the 6 miles along the coastal mountains. The minute I got off the train, I wanted to star walking and see the beautiful gardens on the hills. It is a wonderful area combining wilderness with some farms with gardens and fruit trees (oranges, lemons, grapes,figs etc.) The weather was hot and there were many people from different countries that we passed along the trail. We stopped at Cornilia and we bought the most delicious frozen yougurt and we try the strawberry ice cream. After hiking from Cornilia about 4 kilometers and looking down at the beautiful beach. I wanted to go swimming so bad. At one point, we followed a path down to the rocky shore, and I had a nice swim (Allan didn't go because he was sick). The water was cristal clear and warm, this was the best part of my hike. I won't forget this beautiful place that I enjoyed so much. In the evening we shared a dinner at a restaurant near our hotel that included different kinds of seafood, especially clams, a mixed salad and clams and tomato sauce linguine for 20 Euros (about $28). It was a terrific dinner and high quality food.

After two days in La Spezia, we took the train down to Salerno, in the south past Rome and Naples. Salerno has a stunning seaside location at the foot of a high mountain ridge (the Amalfi coast). From the stazione in the early evening, we walked along the beach promendade for a few kilometers to our hotel. Unfortunately, there is a lot of garbage along the beach. Unfortunately the graffiti is terrible, I didn't think I was going to see so much graffiti almost everywhere in this small village. We passed many bars and pizzerias, the main businesses in this part of town. We had a great view of the sea and the mountainous coastline from our hotel room. Here we rested a day while my husband gets better from his cold.

Visiting an elementary school in Germany

We were invited to observe the fifth graders in a bilingual classroom in Dresden, Germany. It is amazing to see the respect that the students showed for the teacher as well for the guests. The teacher let the students know that she was going to bring two English speakers to her class. The location of the school is beautiful, but the building is old. I was shocked to see that the school doesn’t have computers for the students and the classroom lacks a good slide projector. When we entered the classroom, they greeted us in English and the teacher told the students that as long as they have questions to ask they weren’t going to study the text book. The questions began and the students asked many questions about the culture in the United States. They were interested in knowing about our favorite sport, music, food, and what we thought about president Obama. I was impressed by the level of their English understanding as well as their communication skills.