Pain Must Not be Wasted

I met Gerda Weissmann Klein at the White House Conference on Teenagers in May 2000.
We sat next to each other in an afternoon breakout session on the Youth as Resources program. We spoke briefly about how we happened to be at this conference where we spoke of the human spirit and of our shared mission — to recognize the resilient spirit in youth, to claim it and nurture it, and to encourage communities to use and celebrate it.

All But My Life

At the end of the session, she gave me an autographed copy of her book, All But My Life.
I didn’t know she was a Holocaust survivor and that her book is required reading in many schools nationwide, and that a documentary based on her story had won an Academy Award. What I did know, after reading her book was that the heart of this short, 76-year old, passionate woman could have embraced a city full of children.

Two months later, Gerda who was busy with speaking engagements around the world, called my assistant to ask if I ever get out to Phoenix. I had traveled to Phoenix twice in 10 years, but as fate would have it; I was leaving in two days to speak at a conference in Arizona.

GI Rescues Gerda

Gerda invited me to her beautiful home. We sat at her table. “Gerda,” I said, “It’s delicious, but you haven’t stopped feeding me since I arrived!” “Jack,” she reminded me, “I really didn’t eat for three years.” Across the table sat her husband Kurt. As a young GI, almost 60 years before, he had found and rescued a 67 pound Gerda Weissmann, then near death. She had lost everything and everybody in her life except for the cherished pictures of her family which she had hidden in the lining of her shoe. She describes it in her book: *I stepped out of the tub. The nurse dried my body and hair. As I stood nude, before a clean, blue and white checkered man’s shirt was put on me, I realized abruptly that I possessed nothing, not even a stitch of clothing that I could call my own. I carried only the pictures of Mama, Papa, Arthur, Abek, that I had carried here.

Inspirational Letters Written to Gerda

Soon Gerda was pulling letters at random from the many tote bags stacked to the brim with correspondence from kids across the country. A girl from Minnesota wrote of her anorexia and her deep wish to commit suicide after her father had walked out on her family. But Gerda’s story kept her from action. “...The Nazis took everything you had. You have NO family left. I realized that at least I could see my father once a month. You are an inspiration! You have given me back my life.”

And a young woman from Columbine had written, “I was fat, despairing and felt incompetent. Your book and your presence have given me the strength to speak out about what the Columbine tragedy has meant, and how we all have an obligation never to allow this sort of tragedy to happen again... ..I was almost too shy to speak up in class. Now I’m giving speeches all over...”

Survival is a Privilege and Burden

Looking up from the letter she had just read me, Gerda said, “You see pain must not be wasted.” As she says in her book, “Survival is both an exalted privilege and painful burden.” This is for me, the most awesome part of Gerda’s message—not simply hope, but how she turned suffering into healing for others.

How people endure, what anchors them, especially in times of terrible suffering, has increasingly claimed my interest, for it’s not simply what we do in working with children and youth, but it’s why we are doing it.

Too soon, our visit ended, and I boarded a plane for Mississippi to deliver a keynote address at a child welfare conference in Hattiesburg. Little did I realize that I carried Gerda’s message with me, and its power would manifest itself in a way neither of us could have foreseen.

Cookies and a Ball = Mentors

Those in attendance at the conference were healers — social workers, professionals in mental health and early childhood education, a sprinkling of police, and those who worked in or operated group homes. During the conference, a police officer named Ron Addington, who ran the Juvenile Division of the Picayune, Mississippi, Police Department, talked about how he had gone into some tough public housing areas “with cookies and a ball” and lured kids into a game of four square. His efforts eventually grew into a full-fledged sports program, fishing trips, and mentors for kids without fathers.

After my remarks, I was asked to speak to about 40 kids in foster care. So I enlisted the help of Ron, to address the kids. Given his passionate commitment to kids, I knew he would be of great support. I opened up the discussion by asking the kids, “What do you need to succeed?” Hands shot up!

“Love”

“Determination”

“You need to be tough”

“Confidence”

“Education”

“A skill that somebody will pay for”

“An adult that will stick with you”

Use the Pain to Help Others

I compared their list to the resiliency or “protective factors” identified by academics. I told the kids that their list was as good as the researchers’. Then I spoke about their experience in foster care, how they had something nobody else had, and how they could use their experiences to help others.

Each of the kids had been through rough stuff--school failure, rejection, neglect, physical and sexual abuse, witness to violence. But the gospel of Gerda reached them. I told them, “I know you feel that you are not like other kids, that you are different. That you are wounded, that your experiences have made you weird. But the very fact that you are sitting here, not in jail and not dead, shows how strong you are. You must use that pain to help others.”

continued on pg 2