The Dearborn Heights Connection
May 16th, 2009 at 5:46 pmFrom Bill:
It has been a very pleasant and enjoyable experience interacting with the students on this trip. We have had two meals with them and joined them for a work session at the New Jewish Cemetery in Wroclaw. Although all of the students are great, it has been most pleasing for me to meet Katie Stevens. The reason? She currently lives about 2 miles from where I grew up in Dearborn Heights, Michigan. Consequently, we come from the same school district. Although there have been some changes in that district, the high school that I graduated from in 1966 is now a middle school that Katie attended, we have the same roots. Three cheers for Dearborn Heights!
Katie Stevens, '11, and William Rafaill, '72, at the New Jewish Cemetery
Only two are in use today. Before the war, Krakow was home to about 65,000 Jews. After the war, only 5,000 remained. Today — only 150.
In 1940, most of them were resettled outside the city limits. The remaining 15,000 were moved into an overcrowded 
From here they “commuted” daily to work in several factories. Here is one such factory:
This, of course, is the famous Oskar Schindler enamel factory. Schindler managed to prevent the deportation of many of his Jewish employees from Plaszow to Auschwitz. When the 2001 Holocaust Studies Service Learning Project first saw this factory, they were amazed that this deed had not been commemorated there in any way. They raised the money to create a plaque and have it mounted on the outside wall. The factory has just been renovated into a museum. One of the best surprises of our day was to find that our plaque was still mounted in a prominent location.
The quote from the Babylonian Talmud indicates that when someone saves a life, he or she saves not only that one person but also all the descendants that person will have in the future. More than 60 years later, Schindler has already saved a small town.
