Echoing Choices - by Charlotte Ference

Written March 13, 2015 – The plane is just past Canada, and I have spent far too much time watching movies when I should be sleeping.

My name is Charlotte Ference, and I am an English and Philosophy major with a minor in Religious Studies at Iona College.  Being a college major is a temporary identification, and as I graduate in May 2015, I identify myself primarily as a thinker suffering from a prolonged case of wanderlust.

 Majoring in English and Philosophy with a minor in Religious Studies has helped me to pursue a range of topics that have truly helped to shape my understanding of our role as human beings in the lives of those around us. 

As I think about what this trip means to this Iona group, I can’t help but think of what this journey does to the goals of the Nazi regime.  We, an unusual study abroad class at full-capacity, have chosen to return and bear witness.  We have made the choice to continue remembering, and even more accurately, we have made the choice to learn. The act of choosing stands in resistance to everything Nazi ideology encouraged.  In a structure dominated by obedience, unquestioning, and control- we have chosen to walk the steps of those sent to their death, and we remember their life.

I have purposefully ignored the itinerary for this trip.  I do not know the schedule, I do not know the activities, the lectures, the speakers.  I chose this in part because I am admittedly excited by the prospect of having someone else be in charge of my traveling schedule, but also because I want to have as few expectations as possible. Monday, March 9th, the class went to Lincoln Center to listen to a performance of the Defiant Requiem.  Verdi’s Requiem as interpreted by the chorus at Terezin concentration camp, as interpreted by the orchestra and Murry Sidlin, as heard by an English and philosophy major with a minor in religious studies was quite an interesting experience.  

Our seats were on the side of the Avery Fisher Hall, facing the opposite seats and requiring a slight turn to the left was the orchestra.  What struck me though, was that during the incredible music, I had in my immediate line of sight twenty-eight exit signs.  Without turning my head, I could see nearly thirty options for audience members to leave.  As a philosophy major with an interest in post-holocaust theories of death, I was intrigued by this and so constantly distracted throughout the performance.  Remembering seeing Sartre’s “No Exit,” in England last year made me contemplate the weight of keeping an religious population so connected with their physical location and lineage in a single location with no exit.  The personal and emotional hell that can grow and develop when confined to a space is unquestionable, but the Requiem was beauty.  

It was a resistance as much as the prisoners could manage.  It was daring, brave, and ultimately, their self-determined exit.  

Their choice lingered in the air as music, a sound our own choices attempt to echo as we engage with the history that demands our attention.