All of us at Oakton were eager to see how Oprah would handle a show featuring high school essay contest winners writing on the relevance of Elie Wiesel’s memoir of the Holocaust. (See my column of May 22.)
How would she balance the horrific past with an afternoon show celebrating teenagers’ futures? More precisely, would Oprah be able to honor Wiesel and his seriousness and still give high school students the whirlwind brush with celebritythey anticipated?
I knew Oprah had pulled it off when Lucy Young, one of the contest winners, returned from the show’s taping. Not surprisingly, she grinned as she recounted her pleasure at the perks of a talk-show appearance. But she also knew that the perks didn’t compare to the show’s more profound moments.
I thought we needed to commemorate Lucy’s accomplishment. Dahlia agreed to tape the show, and I ordered two big cakes from Costco.
This sounds like a class party, but I was aware that the subject of Lucy’s essay was hardly “par-tay” material. How could we remain upbeat in honoring Lucy without trivializing the human devastation she wrote about?
Oprah accomplished this feat with her lead-in show touring Auschwitz with Wiesel. There were no second takes; they walked, spoke sparingly, and let the “silences speak.”
In the classroom, we cut the two cakes and an orderly line of 50 students formed; at least one proclaimed this to be “the only fun class of the year.” Then Dahlia pressed “Play,” and the show began.
We all cheered when we spotted Lucy twice as the essay winners filed onto the stage, but the class settled into a sobered silence as several Holocaust victims were introduced, and as recent stories of genocide took their places alongside Wiesel’s account.
Clips of students reading their essays were interspersed with biographical accounts of Wiesel, other Holocaust victims, and two students who had been part of the Rwandan genocide of 1994. The dominant theme of the show was that genocide did not die with the liberation of Auschwitz. Every student and victim on the show felt a solemn obligation to tell and retell stories of atrocities in the hopes that someday humanity will truly “remember.”
I asked Lucy to conclude the class by reading her winning essay aloud. She sat on a tall stool at the front. Quietly and distinctly, she read her three pages on why the novel “Night” is relevant today. She mentioned massacres in Sudan and killings in the United States motivated by hate, racism and homophobia. When she finished, we clapped in celebration of her accomplishment.
Absence of words may speak loudly, but Lucy’s words resonated in an even deeper place. Hers was one more story eloquently told, one more step toward remembrance.
Erica Jacobs teaches at Oakton High School and George Mason University. She can be reached at [email protected].
