THE BRAILLE MONITOR

Vol. 47, No. 5May, 2004

Barbara Pierce, Editor

Published in inkprint, in Braille, and on cassette by

THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND

MARC MAURER, PRESIDENT

National Office

1800 Johnson Street

Baltimore, Maryland  21230

Web site address: http://www.nfb.org

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Monitorubscriptions cost the Federation about twenty-five dollars per year. Members are invited, and nonmembers are requested, to cover the subscription cost. Donations should be made payable to National Federation of the Blind and sent to:

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THE NATIONAL FEDERATION OF THE BLIND IS NOT AN ORGANIZATION

SPEAKING FOR THE BLIND--IT IS THE BLIND SPEAKING FOR THEMSELVES

ISSN 0006-8829

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Atlanta Marriott Marquis Ambassador Albert (Smitty) Smith]

Atlanta 2004 NFB Convention Site

The 2004 NFB convention will take place in Atlanta, Georgia, June 29 through July 5 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel, 265 Peachtree Center Avenue, Atlanta, Georgia 30303. The overflow hotel is the Hilton Atlanta and Towers, just across Courtland from the Marriott Marquis. Room rates are singles, doubles, and twins $59 and triples and quads $65 a night, plus tax of 14 percent at present. The hotels are accepting reservations now. A $60-per-room deposit is required to make a reservation. Fifty percent will be refunded if notice of cancellation is given before June 1, 2004. The other 50 percent is not refundable. For reservations call the Marriott Marquis at (404) 521-0000 and the Hilton Atlanta and Towers at (404) 659-2000.

Rooms will be available on a first-come, first-served basis. Reservations may be made before June 1, assuming that rooms are still available. After that the hotels will not hold their room blocks. So make your reservation now.

Both hotels are twelve miles north of the Atlanta-Hartsfield International Airport and are conveniently located off Interstate 85. Take Exit 96, International Boulevard, turn left onto International Boulevard, go to Peachtree Center Avenue, and turn right. The Marriott Marquis is on the right in the second block. To get to the Hilton, turn left onto International Boulevard, go to Piedmont Avenue, and turn right. The Hilton is on the left. Guest-room amenities in both hotels include cable television, coffee pot, iron and ironing board, hair dryer, and dataport.

The schedule for the 2004 convention is as follows:

Tuesday, June 29Seminar Day

Wednesday, June 30 Registration Day

Thursday, July 1 Board Meeting and Division Day

Friday, July 2Opening Session

Saturday, July 3 Tour Day

Sunday, July 4 Banquet Day

Monday, July 5Business Session

Vol. 47, No. 5, May, 2004

Contents

NAC President's Job Eliminated

by Barbara Pierce

AIDB Board Votes to De-NAC

by J. Michael Jones

Center Helps Those Who Recently Lost Sight

to Relearn Life's Skills

by Sam Tranum

Spring 2004 NAC Membership Report

Understanding the Holocaust

by Harold Snider

Blind Jews in the Third Reich

by Gabriel Richter, translated by Gail Snider

Liberation of a Blind Survivor

by Max Edelman

An Adolescence in Crisis

by Hans Cohn

A Visit to the Atlanta Marriott Marquis Hotel

by Barbara Pierce

Why I Am a Federationist: Both Ends of the Spectrum

by Ryan Osentowski

Another Milestone in Ruston, Louisiana

by Ron Gardner

Recipes

Monitor Miniatures

Copyright© 2004 National Federation of the Blind

[LEAD PHOTO/CAPTION: April 7 and 8, 2004, marked the first conference conducted in the new NFB Jernigan Institute. The June issue will include a complete report of the event. In the picture above, conferees were beginning to gather in Members Hall on the top floor of the Institute for the festive closing dinner. The view to the west of the facility can be seen from the windows facing Byrd Street.]

NAC President's Job Eliminated

by Barbara Pierce

Lee Robinson, president of the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving People with Blindness or Visual Impairment (NAC) discovered the hard way on March 5, 2004, that most of the time the chickens come home to roost. Robinson has been superintendent of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (USDB) since 1994, and the clouds have been gathering almost from the beginning. In recent months, however, he has faced growing criticism arising from the school's audit, increasing restiveness from the USDB teachers union, demands from the NFB of Utah for change in business as usual at the school, and finally the elimination of his job by the Utah Board of Education.

Since he has served as chief flag waver for professional excellence and ethics during his year and more as NAC president in the accrediting body's efforts to persuade anyone who would take them seriously that NAC accreditation ensures excellence and professional responsibility in the agencies that acquire its seal of good practice, one wonders if Robinson will soon be forced in the name of common decency to resign from his NAC position.

Federationists will remember that on September 10, 2001, President Maurer, James Gashel, and Peggy Elliott met with representatives of NAC, including Dr. Robinson, to explore the possibility of papering over the differences between our two organizations well enough to enable NAC to become a viable accrediting body. The NFB representatives asked the NAC executive director, Steve Hegedeos, and then NAC President Steve Obremsky, if they were aware of the allegations of student abuse at USDB that were then filling the papers in Utah. They denied knowing anything about the problems, and Robinson pooh-poohed the matter.

For many reasons, including the clear message that NAC was no more interested in looking into member agency problems than it had ever been, the talks fell through, and very soon thereafter Lee Robinson became NAC president. Here is an editorial that appeared on February 9, 2004, in the Ogden, Utah, Standard- Examiner. It is particularly instructive because it reviews USDB shortcomings throughout the Robinson administration. The piece appeared before the legislative review committee had done more than take testimony. Here it is:

Make Change at Utah's Deaf and Blind School

Problems at the School Have Been Persistent

during Robinson's Tenure

When a public official is trusted with taxpayer money and charged with the education and care of the most vulnerable children among us, the standard for performance should be high.

The leadership of Lee Robinson, the superintendent of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind, has set a tone of mediocre management. So it's time for a change.

The laundry list is a long one, including:

* A November 1994 State Board of Education audit released three months after Robinson became superintendent of the USDB questioned whether students were being trained effectively, whether resources were being used wisely, and whether steps were being taken to avoid financial problems. Robinson said no one should be surprised by the findings, but committed to making improvements.

* In December 1995 two dozen parents complained to the schools' Parent Advisory Council about educational deficiencies, including teachers who didn't listen to parents and Robinson's lack of response to parental concerns.

* In September 1996 a lawsuit was filed against the USDB because a student had twice been sexually abused by another student. The suit alleged that a USDB administrator--not Robinson--was warned after the first incident but still failed to stop a second incident two weeks later.

* Years later, after a judge ruled in favor of the school administrator named in the sex-abuse lawsuit, school staff threw a party to celebrate the decision.

* In April 2001 a mother alleged, and a police report substantiated the claim, that a teacher had slapped her disabled four-year-old son in the head. It also alleged another teacher had force-fed the boy. The police report said the teacher admitted hitting two other students too. The teacher eventually pleaded guilty to a misdemeanor.

* In September 2001 the teacher's aide who reported the physical abuse at the USDB was fired. Robinson said her position was eliminated due to federal budget cuts.

Fast forward to last week and a performance audit of the USDB. It found that in July 2002, when Robinson was queried by lawmakers during the state's fiscal crunch about USDB funds, he failed to include at least $850,000 in surplus funds and told the legislature six positions at USDB had to be cut. Furthermore, the school reported six unfilled teaching jobs when there were really nine. The audit showed as well that USDB had access at the time to considerable federal funds that had yet to be collected and that it had failed to comply with state law regarding salary increases. The audit also found the Utah Board of Education has been lax in overseeing the USDB.

Testifying before a legislative committee on which sat House Speaker Marty Stephens and Senate President Al Mansell, Robinson said he did not intentionally mislead lawmakers in July 2002. He said he simply misunderstood the information about which he was testifying.

Stephens put it bluntly: "Dr. Robinson, why would the committee ever want to have you testify in front of ... (it) again? Why would they believe you?"

Good questions. The USDB serves more than 1,500 students across the state. From the looks of it, it isn't being managed as well as it could be. One reason could be insufficient state oversight. Indeed the State Office of Education in September 2003 approved another year of employment for Robinson after its annual review of his performance.

It's time for the state to put a magnifying glass on the USDB. The students, their parents, and taxpayers deserve better than they've been getting.

That editorial did a good job of reviewing the high points--or, perhaps more accurately, the low points--of the Robinson years at USDB. But what was the straw that broke the camel's back? A number of Utah papers reported the story. Here is the one that appeared February 6, 2004, in the Deseret Morning News:

Deaf, Blind Schools in Hot Seat

by Jennifer Toomer-Cook

The State Board of Education today will discuss whether Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind administrators should keep their jobs in light of an unflattering financial audit.

The action comes at the request of the Public Education Appropriations Subcommittee. The subcommittee Thursday discussed a legislative audit that found the USDB had $850,000 it could have used to hire teachers but instead reported the funds were restricted and left the jobs vacant, among other financial concerns.

The subcommittee asked the school board and State Superintendent of Public Instruction Steve Laing to consider and recommend administrative personnel changes.

"When you have children who have so many needs, so many specific needs, and you leave these positions vacant when you have the money to hire the teachers ... I would say it is a gross mismanagement of funds," said Representative Karen Morgan, D-Cottonwood Heights. "I have my own personal feelings about (administrative) personnel changes that should take place, but I would like that recommendation to come from (Laing and the school board), and I would like it as soon as possible."

There are perhaps three people at USDB who would meet the definition of at-will administrative employees, including the school's budgeter and its superintendent, Lee Robinson, Laing acknowledged.

The personnel recommendation must be submitted within two months. Today's discussion, under protocol for personnel matters, will not be open to the public.

"I'm not surprised they're asking for it," Laing said.

Robinson declined to comment on Thursday's action.

In summer 2002 legislative budgeters discovered the USDB had a cash surplus of $1.75 million, and recommended half of that be used to help cover the state's budget deficit. In doing so, lawmakers stressed the reduction should not hurt classroom instruction.

Shortly afterward USDB reported the budget cut would end up reducing its operating budget because remaining surplus money was restricted. So it decided to leave positions unfilled--nine in all, the audit found.

In January 2003 legislators requested an audit to see whether those cuts were needed.

The answer: no, according to the audit released this week.

Auditors found the schools had $850,000 in surplus money last fiscal year that was not restricted or otherwise committed and could have been used to hire needed teachers.

The vacancies instead ended up increasing teacher workloads, leading to "difficulty providing effective instruction" and higher class size, the audit states.

In a meeting earlier this week, legislative leaders grilled Robinson over why he reported the funds were restricted.

Robinson acknowledged making wrong claims but said it was not deliberate.

The audit said USDB never misappropriated funds.

But it found the schools shortchanged teachers on pay raises last year and overdid raises this year because they did not follow the legal process for calculating salary increases. The two financially balanced out.

Some of the problems were attributed to "the lack of a well-qualified finance director," the audit states. The current finance director has a two-year degree in accounting, whereas other district finance directors have at least a bachelor's degree, and many have advanced degrees or are certified public accountants.

"Inasmuch as the current finance director is approaching retirement, we recommend that, when the administration hires a new finance director, they select a person with the experience, education, and training needed to navigate the complex finances of the USDB," the audit states.

The school also needs better oversight and needs to improve reporting on student progress toward individual education goals, the audit states.

The State Office of Education, in a response to the audit, agreed with the recommendations. It also mapped an eighteen-month action plan.

"Although there is clear need for major changes in some budget procedures, the acknowledgement from the Legislative Auditor General's Office that neither mismanagement nor malfeasance have played any role in these concerns is welcome news," states the response, prepared by Robinson and associate state superintendents Patti Harrington and Patrick Ogden.

"It appears that, if anything, the concerns identified in the audit are resulting from ultraconservative actions related to budget and the sizable budget reserves that followed from those actions."

In an article titled "USDB Finances under Scrutiny" published in the Ogden Standard-Examiner on Saturday, February 7, reporter Amy Stewart explained the budgeting practices that brought the wrath of state officials down on USDB:

... At the beginning of a fiscal year, USDB is assured how much money is in its budget and can make hiring and other funding decisions accordingly, Robinson said.

"We bill them (the legislature) and use that money the next year," he said.

Otherwise, if the school used the funding the year it comes in, that money could fluctuate, making it difficult for the school to budget, Robinson said.

But auditors and state education officials say reimbursements should be used in the year for which services were provided.

"This year's money should serve this year's children," said state associate superintendents Patrick Ogden and Patti Harrington, in a joint written statement.

Further, the school's funds need to be represented to the legislature correctly, the statement said.

"Admittedly USDB administration has inappropriately referred to these carry forward funds as ‘restricted' funds. Rather, these are ‘committed' funds to the next year's budget and are not restricted in purpose," it said.

The joint statement outlined future direction for USDB, including requiring the school to turn in monthly statements to the state board. ...

The board of education held a closed-door session on February 6, but the following Friday they invited public comment. Naturally the speakers represented almost every possible point of view, including that of the organized blind. In a February 14 story titled "No Decisions, Many Opinions as Board Discusses Schools for Deaf and Blind," Tanna Barry included some of the comments:

... Some people worried the committee would recommend that USDB Superintendent Lee Robinson be removed from his post while others championed that as the only way to have change.

Tammie Payette, president of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind Education Association, told the committee the current school administration has ignored its mission of providing high-quality services to children by leaving teaching positions vacant.

Last year during a general meeting of the association, Payette said many teachers wanted to hold a vote of no confidence in Robinson's administration.

"Now that the audit is complete, the time for change is here," she said. "We're concerned about (Robinson's) business-as-usual attitude. The teachers cannot understand this seeming disregard for the immediate needs of our children." ...

While Sanderson [Robert Sanderson, a member of the USDB institutional council] said the school had erred on the side of caution in its financial practices, he said Robinson has always done his best to manage the school and that maybe the State Board of Education should offer financial education help to USDB.

Robinson told the committee he had not intended any wrongdoing, but admitted to taking an overly conservative approach to how budget money was used. He explained that the funds, deemed an excessive carry forward by the audit, were restricted because they were earmarked for use in the next year's budget.

The audit also suggested the school had about $442,000 in uncollected federal moneys that weren't accounted for in the budget. Robinson told the committee it was the school's practice to collect the federal funds after the end of the fiscal year.

"Some mistakes were made," he said. "There is no question of that. The only thing that has bothered me through this process is that people have questioned my motivation. It has always been my top priority to make children successful." ...

That is the way things stood until the March 6 meeting of the State Board of Education. Here is the March 6 story that appeared in the Ogden Standard-Examiner:

Board of Education Dismisses USDB Leader

Financial Decisions Called into Question

by Amy K. Stewart

Scrutinized for his financial budgeting decisions, Lee Robinson, superintendent of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind in Ogden, will soon be looking for a new job.

The State Board of Education voted unanimously Friday to dissolve Robinson's job position, restructure and rename USDB leadership, and provide more oversight to the school, especially regarding its finances.

Robinson has the opportunity to reapply for the school's new leadership position. The board plans to advertise the position immediately, with the search ending in ninety days.

Robinson was out of town Friday and unavailable for comment. He has been superintendent since August 1994.

USDB Assistant Superintendent Linda Rutledge said she hopes he will reapply.

"He's been a strong leader for USDB, and I sincerely hope he will continue to be our leader in the new position proposed by the State Board of Education," Rutledge said.

However, some USDB teachers, who have voiced complaints about Robinson's management for quite some time, support the board members' actions.

"I think they have listened to the many sides of the issue and made a decision in the best interest of the children of the school," said USDB teacher Carol Ruddell.

The board's decision was in response to an audit by the legislative auditor general, who recommended changes to USDB management structure. The decision also followed a series of meetings of the board's audit committee.

The legislative audit alleged Robinson misrepresented the school's financial condition during budget cuts in 2002. Specifically under scrutiny was $850,000 of 2002 USDB funding that could have been used to hire teachers. However, the school left jobs vacant.

Robinson said in earlier interviews his financial decisions were simply conservative budgeting practices in which he chose to wait until he knew how much funding was coming in, then applied it to the next year's budget, instead of spending the money immediately.

The Legislative Auditor General's Office said neither mismanagement nor malfeasance played a role in the audit concerns.

However, the board unanimously voted Friday to issue a letter of reprimand to Robinson and also to restructure USDB administration.

"It's a dramatic move," said Patti Harrington, associate superintendent of Student Achievement and School Success, with the state office.

USDB will be supervised by Carl Wilson, director of At Risk and Special Education Services, in the state office.

The position of USDB superintendent will be retitled Principal Academic and Operations Officer. This person will be under the direct authority of the director (Wilson).

The USDB finance director, currently Vicki Bell, will be under direct authority of the state office finance director. The USDB position will be moved, either part-time or possibly full-time, from the USDB site in Ogden to the state office site in Salt Lake City.

That was the report of the decisions made at the March 5 meeting. Here is a brief synopsis of the Utah Board of Education's final decisions as circulated by Patti Harrington, associate superintendent for student achievement and school success:

The Utah State Board of Education has eliminated the position of superintendent of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind (USDB) and divided the duties among three positions: director of at risk and special education services (an existing position); principal academic and operations officer for USDB; and finance manager for USDB. The board also more closely specified membership on the schools' Institutional Council. Currently there are eleven members, two of whom represent the blind community and two the deaf community. To those four positions, the board specified that the remaining members represent the following:

A local district special educator;

A local district business administrator;

A representative of the Utah State Office of Rehabilitation (USOR) Division of Services for the Deaf and Hard of Hearing;

A representative of USOR Division of Services for the Blind and Visually Impaired;

Three parents of students receiving services at USDB, one of a deaf child, one of a blind child, and one of a deaf-blind child;

One nonvoting member who is a USDB teacher.

The move came in response to an audit by the legislative auditor general, who recommended changes to management structure, and after a series of meetings of the board's Audit Committee. USDB Superintendent Lee Robinson, who was formally reprimanded, will be allowed to apply for the new position of principal. No timeline was established for the change to a principal form of management.

For more information contact Patti Harrington, associate superintendent for student achievement and school success, (801) 538-7515.

There you have the facts of the story in Utah. By early June Lee Robinson's job as USDB superintendent will be no more. He may decide to apply for the replacement position, but with a letter of reprimand in his file, it seems doubtful that he will be an attractive candidate. We can be fairly certain, however, that NAC will stand by its controversial president. After all, NAC stood by when a USDB teacher admitted striking children but retained her job, when the aide who complained about such treatment of young multiply disabled children lost hers, and when USDB engaged in improper budget practices because those doing the work did not have the training or knowledge to do it correctly. Why should we expect NAC to demand excellence in its leadership?

The NFB of Utah has fought for years for the preservation of USDB under reorganized leadership while insisting that more accountability in teaching Braille and protecting the safety of the students be provided. In letters and testimony the NFB has urged reorganization of the school and disassociation with NAC as first steps toward better service to the blind children of Utah. The first of these steps has now been taken.

We rejoice in the possibilities that now exist in the education of Utah's blind students. We can only hope that those dealing with the recent excitement in Utah will come to recognize that the seal of good practice from NAC still means as little as it ever did. We wish those working to restore the good name of the Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind the very best of luck, and we suggest that the obvious next step in this direction would be to abandon NAC membership and certification. The following article demonstrates how it's done.

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Michael Jones]

AIDB Board Votes to De-NAC

by J. Michael Jones

From the Editor: Michael Jones is president of the NFB of Alabama and for fourteen years was an employee of the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB). At AIDB he served as an instructor/counselor and as an administrator. He resigned in late 2002 to complete his doctorate in vocational rehabilitation and work as a graduate teaching assistant for Auburn University. He is currently writing his dissertation on employment outcomes for persons who are blind and have accessed the public vocational rehabilitation program. He reports in the following brief article about recent positive events at AIDB:

The National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving People with Blindness or Visual Impairment (NAC) has been reviled for decades by people knowledgeable about the blindness field as an embarrassment to accreditation bodies in America. I had read the literature casting doubt on NAC's competence in evaluating agencies, but I was never able to appreciate fully the truth of this criticism of the NAC evaluation process until I experienced it firsthand as a participant in a program review by a NAC survey team.

The program areas that I was evaluated on while working as an administrator for the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind (AIDB) were reviewed by a NAC team member who reported to me that he was a criminal psychologist who had briefly worked in the vision field some thirty years before. I repeatedly inquired if I should present documents to substantiate what I was reporting orally. I was assured by the NAC reviewer that documentation was not necessary. I spent the bulk of my program review answering questions about how the field of vision had changed over the last thirty years and not on evaluating AIDB's programs.

However, one need not draw on my observations alone to illustrate NAC's incompetence. Consider that in the same review year, 1998, while the NAC team was on the scene conducting its accreditation review, a worker at AIDB was using student records for illegal purposes. This is how the Associated Press recently reported the conclusion of that episode:

Alabama News

Woman Sentenced in Tax Scheme That Used IDs Stolen from Blind

The Associated Press

February 25, 2004

A woman convicted in a $700,000 tax scheme that used identification stolen from blind students at a Talladega school has been sentenced to one to two years in prison. Federal prosecutors said Wednesday that former Talladega resident Roshanda Johnson, thirty-three, now living in Plano, Texas, was sentenced on charges of conspiracy to submit false tax claims and identity fraud. U.S. District Judge Inge P. Johnson sentenced Johnson on Tuesday to one to two years, followed by three years of court supervision.

Convicted November 4, Johnson was accused of stealing the Social Security numbers, birthdates, and other information of children attending the Helen Keller School in Talladega and providing it to an income tax return preparer in a false dependent tax scheme. Johnson worked part-time at the school in 1997-98.

NAC might reasonably be asked, don't its teams evaluate for general safe records storage and retrieval processes as a part of the review of agencies? Fortunately the NAC review team that visited AIDB in 1998 will be the last one to extend its probe into Alabama. In 1998 the NFB of Alabama passed a resolution at its state convention urging that AIDB discontinue its affiliation with NAC. AIDB's NAC accreditation was to be up for review in 2003.

For decades the AIDB had continued to pay for NAC accreditation until its new president, Dr. Terry Graham, and its reorganized board of trustees, led by longtime NFB member Mrs. Melissa Williamson, listened to blind people and rejected any further affiliation with NAC accreditation. This move is symbolic and is a signal that services for the blind in Alabama may be moving to a more competent level.

Here is Dr. Graham's letter rejecting NAC accreditation in Alabama:

October 9, 2003

Mr. Steven K. Hegedeos, Executive Director
National Accreditation Council
Lakewood, Ohio

Dear Mr. Hegedeos:

At the September 30 meeting of the Alabama Institute for Deaf and Blind Board of Trustees, the Board voted to discontinue our relationship with the National Accreditation Council. AIDB is the nation's most comprehensive education and service program for children and adults who are deaf and blind, and our diverse array of services literally spans a lifetime from infants and toddlers to senior citizens. Regular examination and review of our programs will continue to be a priority for us, but we have chosen to pursue other options for accreditation at this time.

I thank you and your organization for past support of AIDB and for your efforts on behalf of persons who are blind and visually impaired. On behalf of our board of trustees I wish you and NAC the very best in future endeavors.

Sincerely,

Terry Graham

That was Dr. Graham's letter to NAC. We of the NFB of Alabama are proud to announce that with this decision Alabama can now boast a NAC-free environment. We are also pleased, but not surprised, to report that with NAC accreditation a matter of history the AIDB board has taken other courageous and overdue actions in recent months.

On February 18, 2004, the Talladega Daily Home reported that following a recommendation by the AIDB president and after learning that the Alabama Department of Rehabilitation would no longer share in funding obsolete training programs, the AIDB board of trustees voted to end seven training programs at the E.H. Gentry Technical School. The programs have not shown good results in job placements for graduates seeking employment in these areas. Twelve faithful employees will lose their jobs, which is certainly regrettable, but AIDB now recognizes its greater responsibility to do what it can to help its consumers, students, and workers to work and earn competitively in the twenty-first century.

Also according to the Talladega Daily Home of February 19, the board voted unanimously to raise the hourly pay rate for Alabama Industries for the Blind production workers from $5.98 to $6.28 an hour, the first such actual pay increase in almost fifteen years. Within a few months incentive increases will also begin for workers whose hard work and productivity merit them. Cost-of-living increases have occasionally occurred through the years, but this straight-up pay hike marks a significant shift and was an important decision for the board of trustees to make. Perhaps two such difficult and courageous actions at this time are simply accidental, but I suspect that they are connected in some way with AIDB's decision to step away from NAC. Whatever the case may be, the NFB of Alabama is pleased to give credit to the institute and its board for positive decisions and courageous actions.

Center Helps Those Who Recently Lost Sight

to Relearn Life's Skills

by Sam Tranum

From the Editor: The following article appeared on January 15, 2004, in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel. In a state as riddled with agencies accredited by the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving People with Blindness or Visual Impairment (NAC) as Florida is, it is not surprising that many blind people are frustrated at the lack of effective skills training, particularly for older people who are losing their sight.

Carolyn Lapp is president of the Palm Beach Chapter of the NFB of Florida. In desperation at the complete lack of effective services, she organized classes for seniors who needed help to learn to live with vision loss. It is also no surprise that the reaction of the NAC-accredited agency in the area would be to bad-mouth the effort and to send the reporter to talk with a blind person who could be counted upon to decry the notion of blind people teaching other blind people. Here is the story:

Two years ago John Trabulsi had 20/20 vision. Today he is blind. Now that diabetes has taken his vision, he must relearn how to make his way through the world. It takes some adjustments, some new skills.

That's why Trabulsi, sixty-two, goes to the Florida Outreach Center for the Blind's classes. On Monday, after some practice reading Braille and a session on dealing with stress, students worked on making peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

"I don't know how much peanut butter I have on the knife," Trabulsi fretted. "How am I supposed to figure it out? I like a lot of peanut butter."

Other students and group leader Carolyn Lapp did their best to guide him. It was the often-joked-about situation of the blind leading the blind.

That's just the way Lapp, president of the Palm Beach County chapter of the advocacy group National Federation of the Blind, likes it. That's part of the reason she started the center about nine months ago. She says it's the only place in Palm Beach County where blind instructors teach blind students independent-living skills. The other part is that she simply didn't think there were adequate services for blind people in the county.

Trabulsi goes to four or five classes and groups in an effort to stay busy and avoid sitting home alone. He says learning from blind teachers such as Lapp has advantages.

"There's no doubt about it. When you have instruction from somebody who is blind, they already know what you're going through," Trabulsi said. "The other counselors who just go to school, they don't have that experience."

It seemed to work pretty well Monday. The center still is hunting for a permanent location, so classes are in the Piccadilly Cafeteria in West Palm Beach. About twelve people, with varying amounts of vision, showed up. They sat in front of cafeteria trays loaded with jars of peanut butter and jelly, butter knives, plates, and slices of bread.

Lapp suggested digging a little peanut butter out of the jar and starting to spread it from the middle of the bread outward. Pretty soon everyone was done, and many were munching on their work.

Lapp has big plans for her new center. She envisions a Florida Outreach Center for the Blind that hires blind people to help other blind people. To make it all happen, she is searching for grant money and a 2,500-square-foot location.

Dawn Clemons, a spokeswoman for the Lighthouse for the Blind of the Palm Beaches, took exception to Lapp's claim that Palm Beach County didn't have adequate services for the blind. She said the Lighthouse had been doing a very good job as the primary nonprofit organization serving the nearly 43,000 blind and visually impaired county residents.

Clemons said having blind instructors is less important than having qualified instructors. She said Lighthouse hires instructors certified to teach people with visual disabilities.

Rosanna Lippen, a spokeswoman for the Broward County chapter of the advocacy group Florida Council of the Blind, also thinks sight doesn't prevent someone from being able to teach blind people effectively. "A lot of times a blind teacher will give a better perspective," said Lippen, who is blind. "But there are times when you need a sighted person. If I was newly blind, and somebody who is blind is going to show me how to get around, I would not have that trust."

Despite the disagreements on philosophy, it's good that Lapp took the initiative to fill what she saw as a gap in services, said Sam Atwood, a client advocate for the Florida Division of Blind Services. "I think that the more people take responsibility for their own progress, the better they will do," he said.

Spring 2004 NAC Membership Report

It's been awhile since we reported on NAC's progress in persuading agencies, schools, and workshops to pay for and receive accreditation from the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving People with Blindness or Visual Impairment (NAC). Since the so-called summit in December of 2002, when NAC called together as many folks as they could muster to make the case for its importance in the field of work with the blind, NAC's membership has continued to dwindle. Only six states have more than one NAC member agency, for a total of twenty-six, or two-thirds of the total U.S. membership. Thirteen states have one agency each for a grand total of thirty-nine U.S. agencies on the NAC rolls. That is a net loss of three agencies since the summit. Thirty-three states, counting the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico, are lucky enough to boast a NAC-free environment. Here are the lists as drawn from NAC's own Web site as of March 18, 2004:

The six states with multiple NAC agencies are Florida, 11; Georgia, 3; Illinois, 2; Michigan, 2; Missouri, 2; and Ohio, 6.

The thirteen states with just one NAC member agency each are Arizona, Arkansas, Indiana, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, New Hampshire, New York, North Dakota, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington.

The states now free of NAC incursions are Alabama, Alaska, California, Colorado, Connecticut, Delaware, District of Columbia, Hawaii, Idaho, Iowa, Kentucky, Louisiana, Massachusetts, Minnesota, Mississippi, Montana, Nebraska, Nevada, New Jersey, New Mexico, North Carolina, Oklahoma, Oregon, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas, Vermont, Virginia, West Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming.

[PHOTO/DESCRIPTION: The map of the United States is shown here.]

[PHOTO/CAPTION: The six states with more than one NAC-accredited agency are shown with solid fill. The thirteen with one each have striped fill. The states with no NAC-accredited agencies are clear.]

We conclude this report with a list of the actual agencies that have decided to maintain membership in the National Accreditation Council for Agencies Serving People with Blindness or Visual Impairment:

ARIZONA

The Foundation for Blind Children

www.the-fbc.org

1235 East Harmont Drive

Phoenix, Arizona 85020

ARKANSAS

Lions World Services for the Blind

2811 Fair Park Boulevard

PO Box 4055

Little Rock, Arkansas 72214

FLORIDA

Conklin Center for Multihandicapped Blind

405 White Street

Daytona Beach, Florida 32114

Florida Institute of Rehabilitation Education

1286 Cedar Center Drive

Tallahassee, Florida 32301

The Florida School for the Deaf and the Blind

www.fsdb.k12.fl.us

207 North San Marco Avenue

St. Augustine, Florida 32084-2799

The Lighthouse for the Visually Impaired and Blind

8610 Galen Wilson Boulevard, Suite B

Port Richey, Florida 34668

Lighthouse of Broward County, Inc.

650 North Andrews Avenue

Fort Lauderdale, Florida 33311

Mana-Sota Lighthouse for the Blind

7318 North Tamiami Trail

Sarasota, Florida 34243

The Miami Lighthouse for the Blind

www.miamilighthouse.com

601 SW Eighth Avenue

Miami, Florida 33130

Tampa Lighthouse for the Blind

www.tampalighthouse.org

1106 West Platt Street

Tampa, Florida 33806

Visually Impaired Persons of Charlotte County, Inc.

23312 Harper Avenue

Charlotte Harbor, Florida 33998

Visually Impaired Persons of Southwest Florida

35 West Marina Avenue

PO Box 3464

North Fort Myers, Florida 33903

Watson Center

6925 112th Circle, North, Suite 103

Largo, Florida 34643

GEORGIA

Blind and Low Vision Services of North Georgia

3830 South Cobb Drive, Suite 125

Smyrna, Georgia 30080

Center for the Visually Impaired, Inc.

www.cviatlanta

739 Peachtree Street NW

Atlanta, Georgia 30308

Georgia Academy for the Blind

2895 Vineville Avenue

Macon, Georgia 31204

ILLINOIS

The Chicago Lighthouse for People Who Are Blind or Visually Impaired

www.chicagolighthouse.org

1850 Roosevelt Road

Chicago, Illinois 60608

Deicke Center for Visual Rehabilitation

www.deicke.org

219 East Cole Avenue

Wheaton, Illinois 61087

INDIANA

Indiana School for the Blind

7725 North College Avenue

Indianapolis, Indiana 46240

KANSAS

Envision

www.envisionus.com

2301 South Water

Wichita, Kansas 67213-4819

MAINE

The Iris Network (formerly Maine Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired)

189 Park Avenue

Portland, Maine 04102

MARYLAND

The Maryland School for the Blind

www.mdschblind.org

3501 Taylor Avenue

Baltimore, Maryland 21236

MICHIGAN

Association for the Blind and Visually Impaired

www.abvimichigan.org

215 Sheldon, SE

Grand Rapids, Michigan 49503

Upshaw Institute for the Blind

www.upshawinst.org

16625 Grand River Avenue

Detroit, Michigan 48227

MISSOURI

Alphapointe Association for the Blind

7501 Prospect Avenue

Kansas City, Missouri 64132

Children's Center for the Visually Impaired

3101 Main Street

Kansas City, Missouri 64111

NEW HAMPSHIRE

New Hampshire Association for the Blind

www.sightcenter.com

25 Walker Street

Concord, New Hampshire 03301

NEW YORK

The New York Institute for Special Education

www.nyise.org

999 Pelham Parkway

Bronx, New York 10469

NORTH DAKOTA

North Dakota Vision Services/School for the Blind

www.ndvisionservices.com

500 Stanford Road

Grand Forks, North Dakota 58203-2799

OHIO

Cincinnati Association for the Blind

www.cincyblind

2046 Gilbert Avenue

Cincinnati, Ohio 45202

Clovernook Center for the Blind and Visually Impaired

www.clovernook.org

7000 Hamilton Avenue

Cincinnati, Ohio 45231

Rehabilitation Support Services Inc.

16 Elmdale Avenue

Akron, Ohio 44313

The Sight Center Toledo Society for the Blind

1819 Canton Street

Toledo, Ohio 43624

South East Ohio Sight Center

358 Lincoln Center, Unit A

Lancaster, Ohio 43130

Vision Center of Central Ohio, Inc.

1393 North High Street

Columbus, Ohio 43201

PENNSYLVANIA

Pittsburgh Vision Services

www.pghvis.org

300 South Craig Street

Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania 15213

SOUTH DAKOTA

South Dakota School for the Blind and Visually Impaired

www.sdsbvi.sdbor.edu

423 17th Avenue, SE

Aberdeen, South Dakota 57401

UTAH

Utah Schools for the Deaf and the Blind

www.usdb.k12.ut.us

742 Harrison Boulevard

Ogden, Utah 84404-5298

WASHINGTON

The Lighthouse for the Blind, Inc.

www.lighthousestore.com

2501 South Plum Street

PO Box 14959

Seattle, Washington 98144

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Harold Snider]

Understanding the Holocaust

by Harold Snider

From the Editor: No one with humane impulses enjoys thinking or talking about the Holocaust. We take pride in the relative handful of individuals and groups who did what they could to thwart Nazi cruelty or who risked their lives and reputations to help people escape the genocide. But by and large nations and individuals simply looked the other way or even consorted with the perpetrators to inflict suffering on innocent people.

In recent years many of us have visited the Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., in our free time during the Washington Seminar. Perhaps we are mindful of the admonition: "Lest we forget." We also remember George Santayana's warning that "Those who do not remember the past are condemned to repeat it."

But why should a consumer organization of blind people in twenty-first-century America devote its time and attention to the Holocaust? Dr. Harold Snider, a longtime Federation leader, explains why in the following article. This is what he says:

I am prompted to write this article as chairman of the National Federation of the Blind in Judaism, an interest group that allows Jewish Federationists to come together to deal with issues of common concern. Although World War II ended almost sixty years ago, the death of more than six million Jews in Nazi concentration camps continues to be an issue of concern to all Jews, blind or not. The hate and prejudice that inspired the killing of more than six million of our people is very difficult to comprehend, even more so because we as blind Jews cannot see the photographs documenting the tragedy and can attempt to understand this catastrophe only by reading Holocaust literature, visiting Holocaust museums, or talking to Holocaust survivors themselves.

This issue of the Monitor, with its articles about the Holocaust, permits all of us, Jews and non-Jews, blind and sighted, Federationists and non-Federationists, to get some small idea of what the Holocaust was really like from the perspective of two blind Jewish survivors. The more scholarly article also illuminates the nature and extent of the attack on blind people. It is important for all of us to remember that Hitler and the Nazi killing machine did not want to eliminate only the Jewish people. Blind people were also high on the list of the defective who were to be eliminated. Therefore to be both blind and Jewish was particularly unfortunate.

As an eleven-year-old blind boy in the sixth grade in Jacksonville, Florida, I came face to face with the effect of the Holocaust in my own family. My cousin, Frances Hirschfeld, had survived the Auschwitz concentration camp along with Julian, who later became her husband. Frances was visiting my great-aunt, and I asked my mother if I could speak with her about her Holocaust experience. I was doing a project on Germany in social studies.

In September of 1939 Frances and Julian had been neighbors in Warsaw, Poland. They were each married, and each family had two children. Frances was an accountant by training, and Julian was a research chemist. These families suffered incredible privation and discrimination under Nazi occupation. In April of 1943, after having been displaced from their homes in Warsaw, Frances and Julian along with their spouses and children were deported to the Auschwitz concentration camp on the same train.

When they reached the camp, a selection process took place. Frances's husband and two children and Julian's wife and two children were sent to the gas chamber. Frances and Julian themselves were forced to work as slave laborers. Frances was one of the inventory clerks who kept track of all of the items taken from Jews on the way to the gas chamber. Julian worked as a chemist in a munitions factory at Birkenau, a satellite work camp.

After liberation in 1945, Frances and Julian made their way to Paris, where they eventually married. Frances wrote to my great uncle, who assisted them to immigrate to the United States, where they began a new family. Julian was employed as a research chemist and invented many new artificial fibers.

Although I have only briefly recounted their story here, the effects of my interview with my cousin Frances will be with me as long as I live. The Holocaust is personally comprehensible to me as a blind person only because of the love and patience of my cousin in telling me her story. As a trained historian I think that it is important for all of us to understand the lessons which this Holocaust or any genocide must teach us. Like it or not, we as blind people are among the most vulnerable in any such situation. The firsthand accounts of Max Edelman and Hans Cohn as Holocaust survivors should make Monitor readers pause to reflect.

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Gail Snider]

Blind Jews in the Third Reich

by Gabriel Richter

translated by Gail Snider

From the Editor: Gail Snider speaks German fluently and has taken courses in German translation. She works as a peer counselor and Braille proofreader for Services for the Visually Impaired in Silver Spring, Maryland, and is a longtime member of the NFB. When we decided to address the subject of the experiences of blind people in the third Reich, we were told about the book, Blindness and Eugenics, by Gabriel Richter, published in Freiburg, Germany, in 1986. The book has not been translated into English, and in fact we received only a few excerpts in German from Heinrig Scholler, a blind colleague of the author, who wrote the book's introduction. All efforts to contact Gabriel Richter himself failed. Gail agreed to translate Richter's text about blind Jews under the Nazis in the material we received as well as two interviews that appear, we believe, in the chapter on sterilization law. "Blind Jews and the Third Reich," chapter X, section 3 begins on page 81 of the book, and chapter XI, "Sterilization Law," section 5 begins on page 134. Here is Gail's translation:

The history of blind Jews during the Third Reich is inextricably bound up with that of all the Jews living in Germany and the German-occupied countries. Blind Jews received no special treatment. They could be regarded as special to some degree in that they were more likely to be declared unfit for work and could be found in greater numbers among the elderly. But of the roughly 2,000 laws, ordinances, and regulations passed against the Jews between 1933 and 1945, very few concern the blind in particular.

The "Aryan paragraph" was introduced at a meeting of the Union of Blind Academics of Germany in July of 1933. Chairman Carl Strehl expressed his willingness to go along with the decision to exclude Jews from the union as follows: "For the U.B.A.G. it was a matter of course that we would align ourselves with the fundamental principles of the new National Socialist government and carry them out as they related to the union's day-to-day activities."

In October of the same year the Federation of the German Blind announced an amendment to its constitution which stated in Section 9 that only someone "of German origin" could be a regular member. At the same time the following notice appeared in the Blinded Veteran: "Members of foreign races cannot hold any positions of authority or leadership in state government, and they must be kept out of the teaching profession."

Peter Plein, chairman of the League of Blinded Veterans of Germany, even thought he could see into the future of the Third Reich with regard to special privileges for blinded veterans when he wrote: "It is we, the blinded German veterans, who look to Reichschancellor Adolf Hitler with particular trust; for, since he was deprived of his eyesight for several weeks because of a gas-related injury during that critical November of 1918, he, like no one else, will know how to show his appreciation for the heavy sacrifice that we blinded veterans have made for the fatherland, a sacrifice which we must bear for the rest of our lives." By December 31, 1933, the now 2,884-strong League of Blinded Veterans had thrown out seventeen of its members because of their non-Aryan origin.

Beginning in 1934, a systematic campaign of defamation and hostility was being waged against the Jews, almost exclusively in the Blinded Veteran. In it Richard Kliesch wrote about an incident after World War I. Before then, he said, he had clung to the belief that the war had been lost through "the treason of Marxism," but following the November revolution in 1918, "The people of Israel had triumphed all the way.”

"’The war dead fell on the battlefield of dishonor' is what one teacher, a Jew, had the nerve to say to the young people whose education had been entrusted to him. The soldiers who had come home aged by their experience, those war victims with their bodies shot to pieces--they couldn't understand that. They had fought and sacrificed their health all for nothing. The nation was falling apart. Moneylenders and black-marketeers were getting rich; corruption dominated public life; traitors, Marxists and Jews, were in control."

Elsewhere in the Blinded Veteran of 1934 is a reference to a statistic in the national archive, according to which: "the total number of Jews who had fought and died in the war (was) well below the average for the population in general." As a result it was concluded that Jews would be "systematically pressed into service at the front."

In the same year a renewed attempt took place to portray the Jews as "postwar profiteers," and again the author was Richard Kliesch: "As exploiters of the plundering that went on after World War I, the international Jews triumphed, for they deceived not only our honest, hardworking German boys but also their own German accomplices."

Later, stories written by disabled veterans told how they had become "anti-Semitic." On this subject Walter Mettel described in the Blinded Veteran how a Jewish medical student in a "fit of experimentation fever" had chopped off a wounded soldier's arm. Further examples of hate propaganda against the Jews continued to appear in the Blinded Veteran.

When it came to denying Jews their civil rights, a definite effort was organized to forbid blind Jews to wear the yellow-and-black armband for the handicapped, but this move was rejected on July 13, 1942. At a time when the Jews already had to wear the yellow Star of David, when their extermination had been decided upon long before, and when the deportation and murder of Jews were already underway, allowing blind Jews to wear the armbands for the handicapped comes across as a farce.

Anyway officials ruled that Jews could continue to wear the armband, though not for their own sakes, but because "the protection of other road-users" was "of primary importance": "The truck-driver, bicyclist, etc., must acknowledge and take into account the sensory disturbance (deafness, blindness) or motor impairment of a person wearing this form of identification and must behave accordingly." In any event, it was intended that the protection guaranteed by the legal right to wear the armband should be more rigorously enforced.

The first deportation of German Jews to Poland occurred in the fall of 1939. "Being sent to the East meant nothing less than extermination. Hunger and hard labor were supposed to kill off the Jews; anyone who survived was earmarked for a violent end." They shared this fate with the Jews living in all the German-occupied countries.

A small number of firsthand accounts exist by blind people who either experienced or witnessed the deportation or extermination of blind Jews, and a few documents shed some additional light on the subject. They describe the conditions in the Theresienstadt concentration camp, in which "Jews who were old, disabled, and decorated war veterans" were placed. Because of the "special" status of Theresienstadt there are no actual reports of blind people in the extermination camps.

The first transport from Germany arrived in Theresienstadt on June 2, 1942. The relevant documents confirm the existence of a blind ghetto which was part of the Welfare Unit and was housed in Building Q 319. Before he himself was sent away to die in the fall of 1944, the head of the welfare unit was Dr. Karel Fleischmann, a medical doctor who was also a talented poet and sketch artist. Once he addressed the blind in an attempt to give them a picture of their suffering, their destiny, and their new surroundings:

To the Blind in Q 319:

"We fill up our memory; meanwhile our conscience and intellect remain empty." (Montaigne)

A sighted man is speaking to you: a human being who appears to have an advantage over you, but a human being who is at the same time at a great disadvantage, for on the borderline between light and eternal shade there is a barricade blocking the road. I see you sitting on benches, not smooth, carved ones but rough planks of wood ... Transports arrived and the attics were cleared out and hastily cleaned and detached from the wood-paneled walls. They crammed the attics with people: the old, the frail, the sick, and carriers of infectious diseases.

Here I learned about wretchedness, pain, and misfortune ... I see the grotesque facial expressions of the dying, I see the eyes glazing over, the open, parched mouths gasping in the throes of death ... You did not see all that. You do not see the flights of worn-out stairs; you do not see the narrow courtyards, the stores, the workshops with their sad windows like bleeding, weeping eyes. Nor do you see the trucks filled to overflowing with sick and diseased people. You do not see the mournful battalions of old men and women, driven from their homes, as they arrive, their forms bowed and bent, dragging their pitiful possessions behind them on the dusty road. It must take a certain mental and moral strength not to lose your bearing in such a profoundly altered situation ... Now I am closing my eyes and putting myself in your shoes. You were taken by the hand, led to the train, locked in the compartment, screamed at, and after a while you arrived somewhere or other and got screamed at again; then they made you sit down somewhere or other and proceeded to treat you sometimes well, sometimes badly. Everything was different: different food, a different bed, even the peaceful rhythm of your days had changed.

Among the blind men in Theresienstadt was Dr. Victor Cohn, a welfare officer for the blind from Breslau, who, unlike his wife, survived the horrors of the concentration camps. He left us a poem by a deaf-blind woman, Else Helene Dreyfuss, who also perished in one of the camps. This poem gives us a glimpse into this woman's inner world and, at the same time, gives the thoughts of people with other disabilities a chance to be heard:

And Yet

I cannot see, I cannot hear,

Yet in my mind it's bright and clear.

The mental powers that give me joy

The evil powers could not destroy.

I see no sky, hear no bird's song,

My sight and hearing both are gone;

And yet my soul is not in pain,

For there I see, I hear again.

By the end of World War II, 139,000 Jews had passed through Theresienstadt. Up to 95 percent of them were deported from there and murdered in the extermination camps.

Between the fall of 1942 and the spring of 1945, 3,200 who were also blind and scheduled for the same end passed through the camp. In September of 1942 about 1,000 blind people were in Theresienstadt; in December of 1943, roughly 600. On October 9, 1942, the Welfare Unit for the Severely Injured and Physically Handicapped was founded. The welfare unit in Theresienstadt housed 565 blind people in July of 1943, 668 in October of 1943, and 333 more on June 30, 1944. Meanwhile, the Nazi authorities were relentlessly transporting Jews from there to the extermination camps, where they killed them.

This genocide, which cost six million Jews their lives and has been called the most consequential in human history, also caused the deaths of 5,000 blind people.

Interview with a Blind Woman

Affected by the Sterilization Law

December 4, 1984

Question 1: What did you know about the Defective Offspring Prevention Act?

Answer: We heard a little bit about the act in class. The way it was presented made it quite clear that I had some vague reason to feel guilty about something. I kept wondering over and over again: "Why me especially?"

Question 2: Did the act affect you personally?

Answer: Yes. I was sterilized on January 23, 1935. It was during Advent, 1934, and we were all sitting in the dining hall, when suddenly I was told to go to the director's office. This was unusual at that time of day. My heart was pounding fiercely, and I kept thinking: "You haven't broken any rules, have you? And you did do all your homework correctly, right?" I was exactly twelve years old, still just a kid. I played and I enjoyed schoolwork; I was happy and mentally up to par. I wasn't exactly enlightened about sexual matters, though. All I knew was that all women and girls menstruate and that babies are not delivered by the stork. So there I was, standing in front of the director.

Director: "Hello. Sit down, please. I have asked you to come and see me because I have something very important to discuss with you. It's this: in the next few days you are to have surgery. But you must not say anything about it to anyone!"

Me: "But why, Sir? After all, I'm not sick, and nothing's hurting me!"

Director: "The surgery is necessary. You don't need to be afraid of it."

Me: "So when am I going into the hospital, and when will I have the surgery?"

Director: "That I cannot tell you exactly. It will be in the next few days."

Me: "But what for? Why?"

Director: "Look here, you've been studying biology in class, right? Surely you must have heard something about nerves and nerve fibers."

Me: "So whereabouts will they do the surgery? On my eyes?"

Director: "No! on your abdomen. The nerve fibers are going from your tummy up into your head and right to the sight center of your brain. Maybe there's a chance you could get some of your vision back after the surgery--not all of it, but perhaps some, at least. And that would be really nice, wouldn't it?"

And that was the end of the discussion. After that I went home for Christmas vacation. My parents said nothing to me at that time about the decision to have me sterilized, although they had been notified of it. The only information they shared with me was that I had to have surgery.

My father did fight the decision, though he didn't say anything about it to me then. As he explained later, he had to go to court. First he asked the judges to postpone the sterilization till I was twenty, but they refused. Then he petitioned the court to wait until I had my period so that he could do a better job of explaining everything to me. Their snap judgment was: "The sooner it's done, the less dangerous it is." I don't blame my father for what happened. Back then, the rationale he gave me for giving his consent went like this: "Look, you're a pretty girl, after all. Perhaps you would like to get married one day. Then it'll be a lot easier for you and a lot better if no children come along." But I myself was profoundly unhappy when I grew bigger and heard that I wouldn't be having any children. And I have been feeling the pain right up to this very day, even though it has decreased somewhat over the years because I didn't find out till later what a big responsibility it is to have and raise a child.

The day of the surgery had come. They brought me to the hospital, a place I had never had to go to before. Even being prepared for surgery scared me terribly. The shock after the operation was every bit as bad; I who had been happy and healthy before was suddenly having dreadful stomach pains. They had made an enormous incision from one hipbone to the other. It was a really difficult and dangerous operation. What can be done today with no trouble at all was dangerous back then. I was determined to get out of bed, but I wasn't allowed to get up even once just to go to the toilet. It took a lot of nurses just to hold me down. I called out over and over again: "I can't see anything at all! Everything's the same as before! Why did you operate on me?"

Whether it was the violent movements I was making or something else that went wrong, by the time I was supposed to get my period, everything inside was all damaged and deformed. I was having a really difficult time, and the cramps were indescribable. I had to have surgery all over again twice. What I had to go through is almost beyond description. In any case, even with all these operations, I never did get my period. I went into a kind of menopause, like a middle-aged woman going through the change. In the end I even had to be treated by a neurologist. It's true that taking hormones helped me somewhat, but even today I still suffer from a lot of health problems.

You have to remember that at the time of the first operation I was still a child, barely twelve when I was sterilized. At fourteen I had to have another operation to correct the position of my uterus, which had fallen and become inflamed, and when I was fifteen, they had to remove my entire uterus and part of my vagina.

Because of the neurological problems and hot flashes which followed the surgeries, I suddenly found my ability to learn and concentrate had become very limited. I just wasn't able to make the grade so I could get into high school, and it was too late to make up what I had missed because the literature I needed wasn't available.

I had been told not to talk about the operations with anyone, but the big girls still managed to get it out of me. The story spread all through the institute like wildfire. I can't begin to tell you how awful it was, being pursued by the boys and even by grown men. After all, I myself wasn't made of wood; on the contrary, because of the fluctuations in my hormones, I was sexually overstimulated much of the time. That got me into situations which brought me nothing but trouble and torment.

Question 3: Do you know anything about the restrictions on marriage in the Third Reich?

Answer: I know what happened to a married couple who are friends of mine. They were faced with tremendous difficulties when they wanted to get married because the husband was suspected of having a genetic defect (he had two blind brothers). The wife was blind too, actually, but her blindness resulted from falling down the stairs. When these two wanted to get married, they had to arrange for a marriage license to be issued by the minister for the Interior, Dr. Frick. Also they had to produce a certificate of fitness for marriage. Finally they did manage to get the marriage license, but only after a blind doctor named Siering, who had some kind of connection with the minister, spoke up for them.

Question 4: Were you able to get together with male peers?

Answer: It used to be that boys and girls could get together for dancing or group games, for example, as long as we were supervised by a chaperon. Suddenly all of that was forbidden. We were punished even if we were seen giving a boy a goodnight handshake or going for a walk in the garden. Anyone who was caught having intimate relations was immediately expelled from school in disgrace.

Question 5: What do you know about the fate of blind Jews?

Answer: I really can't say much of anything about the fate of blind Jews. There weren't any in our school as far as I know. I do know through hearsay that there were a few blind Jews at a different school for the blind, and they are supposed to have been treated pretty well by the nuns there. But I only found out about this secondhand.

Question 6: Were blind people euthanized?

Answer: As far as I know, blind people were not directly at risk if they could practice a profession or were otherwise bright enough to be fully employed. It was only people with mental or other disabilities that went to "X," and their blind friends never heard from them again. The families would receive the news that the blind man or woman had died of some illness or other.

Question 7: What was your employment situation like in the Third Reich?

Answer: I was in the training program to become a telephone operator and shorthand typist. Besides that I had to spend all my free time in the Institute's knitting factory, where we were only allowed to do the most menial jobs. Anyone who got sick even once had to wait till the last minute to see a doctor. If anyone complained of some kind of discomfort, they were simply told, "Oh, that's nothing!" I even know of someone who died. The poor girl looked awfully pale and wasn't feeling well. They hit her and accused her of dusting her face with flour. A few days later the girl was dead.

Question 8: What else happened to you at the Institute?

Answer: We were frequently humiliated and intimidated. If, for example, your stocking had a hole in it or your shoes didn't have a perfect shine or the knot in your tie wasn't perfectly straight, you got punished right there in the dining hall, with all the male and female dormitory staff and school employees sitting round. We always had to submit to these dreadful punishments. We were treated like soldiers in the military, even the girls, and I bitterly resented that.

Question 9: What positive experiences did you have during the Nazi period that you can tell us about?

Answer: The only positive thing was getting to know girls from other schools for the blind and singing with them at the camp sponsored by the League of German Girls. That was really nice. We would do folk dances and sing and enjoy communal activities, and we made friends and had lots of fun playing practical jokes on one another.

Question 10: What did you do after the end of the war in connection with your sterilization?

Answer: I wanted to sue for damages so I could be compensated for all that I had gone through, but I could not get anyone to provide me with the written medical opinion I needed. They said that the damage to my uterus was a birth defect. There was nothing I could do. Whenever I had to get a routine physical, I was always asked, "When did you have your last period?" Each time I had to explain the whole thing. The doctors would get mad and say, "Those criminals!" but if I asked them to give me their opinion in writing, they would distance themselves from me, and nothing was done.

Once when I was hospitalized, it was confirmed beyond any doubt that the damage to my uterus had nothing to do with any birth defect. But in the end, after two attempts to get the required written medical opinion, I lost my courage and didn't do anything more about it.

Letter from a Sterilized Blind Man

In the year 1934 we were each summoned separately to the director's office; none of us knew what this was about. There I was asked by several doctors and party officials how long I had had my eye disease, to which the only answer I could give was:

"Since birth." Not long after that I was taken to the courthouse at (name blanked out), where a judge asked me if I would consent to a voluntary sterilization. I said no, of course, so then a form was put in front of me which required my signature. I did not sign it. Don't make me go into any more detail about that court hearing; it's too painful.

A short time later I got a letter from the Superior Court for Genetic Health telling me I had to present myself there. I did not go, which resulted in a party official coming to the school and forcing me to sign, this time in the presence of the director. At that moment the joy went out of my life because I knew what was going to happen to me.

[PHOTO/CAPTION: Max Edelman]

Liberation of a Blind Survivor

by Max Edelman

From the Editor: Since Max Edelman retired fourteen years ago, he has devoted his time to writing and talking to groups about the Holocaust and blindness. He is tireless in working for the right of blind children to learn Braille. By any standard he is a humane and gentle man; to demonstrate these qualities after having been the victim of the kind of hatred and violence he has experienced is truly astounding. Here is the story of one man's survival and ultimate victory over cruelty and bigotry. It gives hope to the world:

The morning was clear and sunny, promising a fine spring day that Monday, April 23, 1945, when the SS guard officer gave the order to continue to march. Little did we realize that this would turn out to be the last day of the most demented, tormented, and barbaric period in our lives. For me that period had started shortly after the German Nazis occupied my hometown in Poland. I was caught by the SS Sonder Commando (special unit) in a roundup of several hundred young Jewish men in our town to be sent to a slave labor camp.

I spent time in several concentration camps, most in Budzyn Camp, a satellite of the death camp Maidanek in Poland, and in Flossenburg, located in Bavaria, Germany, about seventy miles southeast of Nurenberg.

Millions of words have been written about life and death in Nazi concentration and death camps. From my experience the chance merely to survive hinged upon staying relatively well and going to work every day if possible. Under prevailing conditions this was a tall order indeed--too tall for many millions of Jews and non-Jews.

The most devastating day for me in the concentration camp, in fact in my entire life, was April 8, 1944. Two camp guards in Budzyn roughed me up severely and left me for dead. Back on my bunk in the barrack, I was a bloody mess. My brother ran to fetch Dr. Forster, a fellow inmate and good friend. The Herr Doctor, as he was known to most of us, had been a practicing physician in Austria until the Anschluss. He was a superb human being, always ready to help anyone any time. Meanwhile some of my friends gathered around my bunk, expressing sorrow and offering words of hope and encouragement. Dr. Forster cleaned me up and applied a cold compress. Then I heard him say to my brother, "He is young, and he will mend. I am worried about his eyes. The left one looks very bad, and the right one could be injured too. With only my hands to work with, there is practically nothing I can do for him. God only knows how much he will be able to see."

I mended all right, but the little bit of eyesight I still had in my right eye deteriorated so that in a few months I could no longer recognize objects. To continue going to work became too risky, not only for me, but, more important, for my brother and my friends who stood by and covered for me as long as possible.

Unlike the concentration camp Budzyn, where all 3,000 inmates were Jews, the 20,000 prisoners in Flossenburg were from almost every European country the Nazis had occupied.

The winter of 1944 started early and was very harsh. At that crucial time in my life, without the help of Eric, my barrack supervisor, a German gentile national political prisoner, I would not have survived. Eric was intelligent and experienced in the art of survival in a concentration camp. During those dark days I recalled my father of blessed memory, a very devoutly religious man, telling the family time and again, "God acts in mysterious ways." Because Eric was a German, the camp officers and guards trusted him. He used that trust to my advantage. He lied and alibied to them about my whereabouts at every morning's head count and kept me out of sight. He warned the inmates in our barrack not to do me harm or steal my food. Eric was fully aware of the consequences to him if he were caught protecting a blind inmate and a Jew at that. Obviously he decided to disregard that danger and take the risk.

In late March of 1945 Eric's ability to protect me came to an abrupt end. All supervisors were ordered to have those unable to work transferred to the infirmary, one short step from the crematorium.

On the day following the transfer, Eric came to visit me. He immediately sized up my situation there. After a brief conversation and a few words of encouragement, he went to see the supervisor of the infirmary, who was also a German gentile national. Hans promised Eric that no harm would come to me if he could help it. Eric visited me every day. My brother and friends also came to see me every evening after work.

On Sunday, April 15, 1945, my brother told me the news he had heard at work in the Messerschmidt aircraft plant, namely that President Roosevelt had died. After my company left, I walked over to the bunk of my newly found friend, Father Pierre, a French Catholic priest, to share the news with him. While we were engaged in conversation, an SS officer came in and ordered all Jews to report to the camp square within fifteen minutes. Father Pierre suggested that I pretend that I was not Jewish and not go. At that moment Vasily, a Ukrainian fellow inmate, called out to me from his bunk across the aisle, "Aye, Jew, you have fifteen minutes to get the hell out of here."

"I must go, my friend, because, if I don't, he will surely give me away," I said.

"Yes, you are right; I am sorry," Father Pierre said. We shook hands. "God be with you," he added.

"Thanks, God be with you too," I replied. I walked back to my bunk, put on my pajama-like jacket, and made my way to the door. I heard someone passing close by me, so I grabbed his arm and tagged along to the square. My brother was already there, looking for me. We were counted and recounted. Finally, at dawn, lined up five abreast, the 2,500 Jews from Flossenburg started the death march. None of us knew where we were going.

The going was slow. The on-and-off rain showers didn't help matters. The sound of single shots from a handgun became more frequent as the time went on. I walked holding on to my brother's arm on one side and my friend's arm on the other. On Friday, the fifth day of the March, I too was ready to give up. Not that I was hungrier or more exhausted than the others, but my feet were very sore from the ill-fitting shoes I had on. I mentioned this to my brother and my friend. "Do you know what day today is?" my friend Shlomo asked me.

"I don't really care."

Shlomo said, "Today is April 20, Hitler's birthday, and you are going to give him your life as a birthday present? Not if we can help it." My brother offered me his shoes. I obviously refused. My brother then inched his way to where an SS guard was standing and asked him if he could take the shoes off the dead man who was lying at the side of the road just a few yards away. Surprisingly he got permission. A few minutes later he returned with a pair of shoes for me. A steady rain on the following day added to our misery. On Sunday morning a light rain was still falling. The guards wanted time to dry out, so we stopped at a small farm community just outside the town of Schwartzenfeld. A farmer opened the door to an empty barn, and we were ordered in. At least we had a dry floor to rest on.

Early Monday morning, April 23, the barn doors opened, and a guard shouted "heraus schnell" (out quick). The sunshine and the fresh air felt comforting. Many did not move--they were beyond feeling and caring.

Just then an airplane flew over the area and dropped leaflets. We were not allowed to pick them up, but the guards did. About a half mile down the highway we turned off onto a dirt road leading to a forest. As we got close to the woods, the most incredible thing happened. The guards left us and fled into the woods with their machine guns and their vicious dogs. We experienced an indescribable feeling, a combination of fear and hope. Was it for real or a cruel trick?

We broke up into small groups and started to walk back the way we had come. We were nevertheless very fearful that the guards might still come after us. The closer we got to the highway, the more we could hear the sounds of heavy vehicles. Just at that moment someone shouted, "It's the Americans, we are free!" Not until that moment did we dare to believe it to be true.

Some were laughing, others were crying, and others were too numb to express any emotion at all.

The American soldiers threw the food they had in their vehicles, including their own rations, out on the side of the road. As the situation was becoming deeply emotional, a group of American officers arrived and took charge.

I was not feeling well. My brother walked me over to a bench at a nearby farmhouse and went to seek help from an American officer. In perfect German the American told the woman in the farmhouse to let me and several other sick survivors in and to make us comfortable. He provided us with tea and crackers and told the German woman to serve it to us. That officer came frequently to check up on us and to assure us of his concern and care. Late that afternoon he apologized for not being able to take us to a hospital before the next morning. My brother, too, was in and out that day to tell me about whatever he saw and heard. Early in the evening of that first day of my freedom, my hunger temporarily satisfied, I was sitting on a comfortable chair by the open window listening to the sounds of men and machines. The moaning of one of my fellow disabled survivors in the room made me keenly aware of my condition. I became overwhelmed by self-pity. "I am liberated all right, but I am blind." Except for my brother my whole family had perished. I was practically alone. I became very scared--more scared of life than I had been of death in the concentration camp.

The door opened, and I heard my brother saying, "You have company." Immediately I was embraced in a bear hug. It was Eric. "We made it; we have survived; we are free," he exclaimed joyously, then, "Aye, you are crying, are you in pain?" he inquired.

"No, not that kind," I managed to say between sobs. "Yes, I have survived," I continued. "If it were not for the two of you, I would have gone up in smoke long ago. I am liberated all right, but I cannot see the proud liberators and the rejoicing liberated, including you. I am very scared," I admitted. "The two of you have done everything possible to keep me away from the oven, and you have succeeded. Right now I just don't know whether I should thank you or hate you for it." A moment later I heard the two of them sobbing as well. This was my first day of freedom.

The following day an American officer took me to a convalescent hospital in Amberg, Bavaria, Germany, operated by the United Nations Relief and Rehabilitation Administration (UNRRA). A nurse took me to Dr. Hasselt, the only eye doctor in Amberg, a German of course. He examined my eyes for a minute or two and said, "Max, you will never see again."

I couldn't believe what I was hearing, and I became furious. I turned to the nurse and said, "What else can you expect from a Nazi doctor!" The American woman in charge of the convalescent hospital--I don't recall her name--promised me that, as soon as I regained some strength, she would make sure I was taken to Munich to be examined by an eye specialist at the university clinic. Three weeks later my brother and I went to Munich. The conditions in Germany right after the war were chaotic--no transportation to speak of--but we were given priority to travel the 210 kilometers to Munich on an army truck.

I was examined by the head of the eye clinic, Dr. Meisner, a high-ranking Nazi officer. I was admitted to the hospital, and two days later he operated on my left eye. He cleaned out the eye cavity to be fitted with an artificial eye. Two weeks later he started a medication therapy hoping to revive the optic nerve of my right eye. After two months of treatment the result was nil. Dr. Meisner told me that nothing could ever have been done to save my left eye but that, if I had received treatment immediately following the beating, some or all of the sight in my right eye could have been saved. Unfortunately sympathetic ophthalmia set in and killed the optic nerve. Dr. Meisner suggested that my brother take me home and bring me back to see him in December.

Take me home? What a joke! Home was a furnished apartment in Amberg, so that is where we went. The landlady, Mrs. Eichenmueller, greeted me warmly, and in time we became good friends. Everybody tried to help me snap out of my depression. Mrs. Eichenmueller knew a blind music teacher, so she made an appointment for me to meet him. He tried to teach me violin, but that didn't work. Then he tried to teach me the accordion, but that didn't go very well either. Obviously I couldn't read music, and with the hearing impairment that I sustained as a result of a high fever when I had typhus in camp in 1943, I had a hard time recognizing different notes. Besides, I had no musical talent, so instead of being helped, I just became more depressed.

Somebody told my brother about a great eye doctor in Wiesbaden, so there we went hoping for a miracle, only to receive the same diagnosis Dr. Meisner had given us. When we went back to Munich to the University Eye Clinic in December, we found Dr. Meisner gone, replaced by Dr. Wesseli, who had been head of the eye clinic before the Nazis came to power. Dr. Wesseli had been removed from office because he was a freemason. He was a kind, elderly gentleman who spoke to us like an uncle. After a lengthy examination he confirmed Dr. Meisner's diagnosis, adding that in his opinion no eye doctor could do anything for me unless someone in the future were to come up with a technique or therapy that might help.

In the meantime, he asked, what was I going to do? I had survived the Holocaust, but only the first part. The second part was not going to be any easier for me. He told me that I had three options: 1) do nothing and be a burden to my b