Prof. Sam Pulaski, a holocaust survivor as well as a distinguished scholar-in-residence in Tel Aviv University, Israel still teaches a course each semester on the subject of societal injustice, rise and power of dictatorship, and annihilation of minorities throughout the history of human civilization. Though frail in health while nearing to ninety years of age, he also travels extensively to deliver lectures on similar topics on the invitation of the nonprofit organizations worldwide, dedicated to teaching current generation history’s lessons from the very survivors who experienced them.
Recently Prof. Pulaski traveled to Birmingham, Alabama in US to deliver a lecture in city’s Civil Rights Museum. February had been designated as the “Black History Month” in the nation. Students at schools learn, discuss, and debate on the history of African American citizens of the country starting from their slavery days, emancipation, civil rights movement as well as the current status. Ironically, Birmingham itself has a dark history. Once known as the most segregated city in the country, this city witnessed the worst of that practice along with brutal suppression of peaceful nonviolent resistance movements by powerful local law and order authorities.
After his breakfast with the directors of the institute, Prof. Pulaski delivered his lecture to a roomful of audience. During the question and answer period, he touched on the subjects of his growing up in a ghetto, taking part in the resistance movement resulting his arrest and transfer to Auschwitz death camp, built by the Nazis remodeling a previous army outpost of the country. Later in the day, he joined a team to tour the institute that also acts as an archive for historical records, both in texts and images.
He entered into a room displaying exhibits from civil right era and came face to face with a black and white picture. He froze immediately. In that slightly faded photo, a German shepherd dog handled by a white law enforcement agent had been snarling viciously to a peaceful African-American protester. Prof. Pulaski’s memory transferred him to that fateful night in the ghetto. While his next door neighbor of eighteen years was shining his face with a flashlight, a similar German shepherd dog handled by a young Nazi SS officer snarled at him same vicious way. Another officer then put a gun to his head leading him to a waiting prison van.
Around noon, his hosts took him to the place’s cafeteria for lunch. As he tasted the local cuisine of corn bread, fried chicken, beans, and colored greens, the CNN anchor for the international news appeared on the flat screen TV on the wall. In a live coverage from his original birth country, the current nationalistic head of the state was making it illegal for anyone to even suggest that the past citizens willingly took part with Nazis in executing holocaust, the worst crime against humanity
Recently Prof. Pulaski traveled to Birmingham, Alabama in US to deliver a lecture in city’s Civil Rights Museum. February had been designated as the “Black History Month” in the nation. Students at schools learn, discuss, and debate on the history of African American citizens of the country starting from their slavery days, emancipation, civil rights movement as well as the current status. Ironically, Birmingham itself has a dark history. Once known as the most segregated city in the country, this city witnessed the worst of that practice along with brutal suppression of peaceful nonviolent resistance movements by powerful local law and order authorities.
After his breakfast with the directors of the institute, Prof. Pulaski delivered his lecture to a roomful of audience. During the question and answer period, he touched on the subjects of his growing up in a ghetto, taking part in the resistance movement resulting his arrest and transfer to Auschwitz death camp, built by the Nazis remodeling a previous army outpost of the country. Later in the day, he joined a team to tour the institute that also acts as an archive for historical records, both in texts and images.
He entered into a room displaying exhibits from civil right era and came face to face with a black and white picture. He froze immediately. In that slightly faded photo, a German shepherd dog handled by a white law enforcement agent had been snarling viciously to a peaceful African-American protester. Prof. Pulaski’s memory transferred him to that fateful night in the ghetto. While his next door neighbor of eighteen years was shining his face with a flashlight, a similar German shepherd dog handled by a young Nazi SS officer snarled at him same vicious way. Another officer then put a gun to his head leading him to a waiting prison van.
Around noon, his hosts took him to the place’s cafeteria for lunch. As he tasted the local cuisine of corn bread, fried chicken, beans, and colored greens, the CNN anchor for the international news appeared on the flat screen TV on the wall. In a live coverage from his original birth country, the current nationalistic head of the state was making it illegal for anyone to even suggest that the past citizens willingly took part with Nazis in executing holocaust, the worst crime against humanity
