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Spotlight on CLAL
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How to Spot One of Us
By Judy Epstein
Janet R. Kirchheimer, a respected poet and a CLAL Teaching
Fellow, recently spoke at the Association of Jewish Family and Children’s
Agencies in Philadelphia, on “Successful Intervention with Survivors of the
Holocaust.” Ms. Kirchheimer is the author of the hauntingly beautiful book,
How to Spot One of Us, a collection of poetry inspired by her
family’s tragedy in the Shoah. The workshop was designed to assist
practitioners in their work with Holocaust survivors.
Speaking as both a daughter of survivors and a poet, Ms. Kirchheimer talked
about the importance of living in the space of “not knowing,” and that
working with survivors entailed facing evil on a daily basis from which
practitioners could not emerge unscathed. She talked about the importance of
breathing, figuratively and literally, because man’s inhumanity against man
stifles it. She also discussed the need to observe a Shabbat ─ to take a
break, whether two hours, an evening, or a full day ─ and declare a time to
restore themselves.
“You can’t fix the survivors and you can’t take away their pain,” said Ms.
Kirchheimer. “But you can listen to them, and be there for them. Survivors
live with uncertainty. Poetry is about not knowing. It’s about what is
written on the page, but also about the silences on the page.”
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