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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