Teacher gives a powerful survival lesson

Every fall at Congregation Beth Shalom in Framingham, Mass., a new teacher said, "Shalom." On my memory's chalkboard, they blur together. Except one.

The autumn of the Summer of Love, an instructor bounced into our classroom. She spoke in staccato. Raven hair crowned her head. But her youthful demeanor collided with her Old World accent.

And in this community of Jewish country clubs, children felt empowered to ridicule an alien.

One day someone set a tack, point up, on the teacher's chair. She walked in, noticed it, scooped it up. The classroom held its breath.

"I always check my seat," she began, sitting. "Not because I expect a tack. I expect the unexpected.

"I escaped from a camp. I walked across Europe.

"You think you can scare me with a tack? I survived the Nazis. You can't threaten me. Not with anything."

To us, camps were where we wove lanyards and Nazis were slapstick characters on "Hogan's Heroes."

The following week, the teacher switched the projector on. Silent footage flickered in black and white. Men in striped pajamas stared from behind barbed wire. Soldiers stacked bodies on wooden carts.

After, whenever I started to giggle or pass a note, I remembered the men with cheekbones protruding and tried to imagine myself crossing a continent on foot.

I don't remember who taught me the aleph-bet. But I remember the foreigner who demanded that we climb out of our backyard pools and face our history in black and white.