The Freedom Writers Diary - Erin Gruwell [20]
Danny Haro, a Latino from East L.A., left his barrio and became a lawyer. Now he’s one of Edward James Olmos’s best friends and was in the documentary we watched called Lives in Hazard. Lisa Ramirez is one of the first Latina women to win an Emmy as a television producer and director. Both she and Danny come from poor backgrounds and were the first in their families to go to college and accomplish their dreams. Bob Gentry used to be picked on because he was gay, but ended up becoming one of the first gay mayors in California and was a dean at Ms. Gruwell’s college. Mas Okui, who was forced to leave his school and go live in a Japanese internment camp, ended up becoming a teacher. And the last speaker was Renee Firestone, who lost everything, including her family, in the Holocaust, but still came to America and became a successful clothing designer.
Of all the panelists, Renee’s story affected me the most. She talked about her life and the lessons she had learned from being in a concentration camp. She talked about how hardworking her parents were before the war hit Czechoslovakia. Eventually her family was forced into a Hungarian ghetto and then off to Auschwitz. She and her younger sister were separated from their parents when they arrived at the death camp. When Renee asked a Gestapo agent if she would see her family again, he pointed to a chimney with smoke coming out and said that that’s where she would reunite with her family.
When Renee was liberated from the camp, she had nowhere to go. She needed to start over and that’s why she came to America, even though she could not speak any English. She said she left Europe with about $20 and her new baby, Klara—who she named after her sister who died at Auschwitz—and when she got to Ellis Island they took about $16 for a head tax. So with four dollars to her name, she set out to make a better life.
Her daughter, Klara, came to the event and told us what it was like to be the daughter of two parents who had been in a camp. Surprisingly, after everything that happened to her parents, she said they raised her “not to have a prejudiced bone in her body.” Renee interrupted her and told us never to judge people collectively—it’s so easy to lump people in a group and label them, but that’s how the Holocaust started.
After the panel, we had the opportunity to have dinner with the panelists at the Century City Marriott. Since Ms. Gruwell works at a Marriott on the weekends, the hotel let us have a big dinner there. When we got to the hotel, we were able to walk up to the panelists and shake their hands. During dinner, Renee came to speak with us at my table. She showed us the tattoo on her arm from Auschwitz. The tattoo looked like little numbers from a barcode. She told us how some of the needles they used were infected and that some people got skin diseases. She told us how one person sucked out the ink from her skin because the doctor who gave her the tattoo quietly told her to. If she had not sucked the ink out, she would have been sent to the gas chamber the next day, because her number was called.
Everything from today related to something we have read or watched in class. It’s amazing how Ms. Gruwell went out of her way to contact all these people to come to speak to us. By meeting these people, it made the books we’ve been reading more meaningful. It also made me realize that anything is possible!
Diary 22
Dear Diary,
It’s almost midnight and I feel like Cinderella when she was racing home from the ball, knowing that her chariot is about to turn into a pumpkin. I guess you could call what I just got home from a “ball”—we all dressed up, I got to eat dinner with more silverware than I probably own, and I met Prince Charming. This prince isn’t gonna carry me off on his white horse, or anything. That’s OK, ’cause I don’t like horses anyway, ever since