Based on a true story - high school teacher's attempted lesson on fascism gone awry

Whole Earth Review, Summer, 1993 by Ron Jones

As I look at the assembly before me, I see children. And I am not in some dark place but in a classroom, and I am a teacher again. The image of Eva Mozes comes to my mind -- her wish that we tell all the children about the Holocaust, "for they are the messengers we send to a future we will never see."(2) It's with this vision that I begin to tell her story.

IT WAS OCTOBER, 1986. The phone rang: a late-night call. The faint voice in the receiver asked if I was the Mr. Ron Jones that had conducted The Third Wave. When I answered yes, I heard a clatter of English mixed with German. The woman's voice pleaded with me to come to her in Terre Haute. She had sold her home(3) to sponsor a conference on Fascism and protest the claim that Joseph Mengele was dead.

"All of the children are invited, Mr. Jones. I am one of the Twins, you have heard of us -- children taken to Auschwitz for their medical experiments, to make a master race. You remember the Twins, don't you? My sister will be here, all the way from Tel Aviv -- I have sent her the tickets, she's afraid of travel, and her health -- but for this, she is coming. I have located sixty-seven twins still alive; they are coming to tell the school-children the truth -- what Joseph Mengele did to us. Students will listen to you -- a teacher -- I've printed learning materials for the curriculum and sent them to the schools, 4,000 copies. 128 pages, for the teachers to use in preparation for our conference. You will come, won't you? I've sold everything for this..."

A week later I wobbled down the foldout steps of a commuter airplane to be greeted by a little old woman with wandering eyes. Her name was Mozes, Eva Mozes. I knew because she was the only person in the airport reception area waving a real-estate sign with the inscription MR. JONES -- EVA MOZES WELCOMES YOU! My immediate thought was how old she looked. Of course people of your own age group always look much older. We were both children of World War II.

She looked up at me. "You look a little older than I thought." I grinned. Her eyes smiled in relief. It was my turn to stare, at her wonderful jigsaw face. She answered my look. "It's the eyes, isn't it," she quavered. "The way they move back and forth. They tried to make them blue and, like everything else they tried, it didn't work." She swept one hand from side to side. "Don't let them bother you, I can still see."

On the way to my hotel, Eva turned and looked at me. "This conference -- it's going to be for all the children, so they won't forget -- there's candy bars in the glove compartment." She seemed to be looking through me toward some specter in the fields. Some unseen thing that slid past us in slow motion. A whisper fell delicately from her lips. "Always so orderly, the intruments are always in the same place, on the same tray -- waiting for me --"

Her thoughts that had escaped the past quickly tried to find the present. She smiled and cautiously explained. "Can you imagine -- I'm always trying to understand why it is when I go shopping in the grocery store, the big chain stores, I see -- human skulls, always piles of skulls neatly stacked waiting for me, and then I realize I'm looking at a display of oranges, or melons -- cut hay does it too, sometimes. Why is it, hay in a field, reminds me of such things?" I didn't have an answer. She whispered, "There are good children here; it's important they don't look up some day and see skulls."