By Patrick Holohan

Sandra Perl is not a child of Holocaust survivors. She did not lose any family members during that time. She admits that at first she felt she had no right to talk about the Holocaust. “My experience seemed pale, secondhand,” she said.

Despite this, Ms. Perl’s trips as to Innsbruck, Austria, site of tremendous Jewish persecution during the Second World War, enabled her to establish dialogue with descendants of Nazis. What had started as hatred toward Germans and Austrians for what they had done to her people evolved into understanding between individuals attempting to let go of their prejudices.

Ms. Perl read excerpts of her book, “On Austrian Soil,” describing her experience as a writing instructor to Austrian teachers in 1996 and in subsequent trips. Though she admits she was “struck by the beauty of [the] land,” she was at the same time “filled with foreboding.” She acknowledged that, “Had I been a teacher in Innsbruck 60 years earlier, I would have been forced to wear the yellow star [of David, used to mark Jews during the Holocaust].”

Perl quickly learned that the Austrian teachers had been told that their teachings inside the classroom morally neutral. In order to persuade the teachers to change their ways, she told them a quote from writer Vito Perrone saying that “Education, at its best, is first and foremost a moral and intellectual endeavor.”

As she had her students become more honest with themselves, Perl found it impossible to ignore her own feelings, as her head was filled was filled with images of the SS hurting Jews, shouts of mothers having their children torn from them. “What am I doing here in the homeland of Hitler’s birth?” she wondered.

As she spoke about her own struggles and told her students on her second trip, eight months after her first, that she was a Jew, the students began to open up about their histories and their own prejudices. Some responded with anger at being prompted to speak about horrible events, but others engaged Perl.

One student, Margaret Thessler, wrote a poem in the voice of her father-in-law, an unrepentant Nazi. The poem begins each line with “We didn’t mean to,” and one line in particular reads, “We didn’t mean to make you crawl on your knees.” Perl showed a video clip of Margaret reading her poem, voice shaking.

On Perl’s third trip to Innsbruck, Margaret asked her to have dinner with Margaret’s Nazi in-laws. Perl considered saying no before realizing that if she were going to tell her students to be open and honest, that it would be hypocritical not to meet the people that hated her without knowing her.

Perl and Margaret decided not to tell the parents-in-law that Perl was a Jew. As a result, they were able to have a pleasant dinner with no conflict, until, prompted by Margaret, Perl said, “We are Jews.”

The mother-in-law, after a deep sigh, said “[The Holocaust] is all true. It all happened.”

Through their conversation, they were able to speak about the past and prejudices. Perl was pleased that they had not revealed her Judaism earlier, as it allowed them to realize that, without artificial labels of hate, people with longstanding differences and legitimate gripes can sit down and break bread together.