0 1 0 EMEM w w A qw w w w 8B Wednesday December 7,201 // The Statement PERSONALSTATEM ENT THE LITTLE BLUE BOOK WHEN A NEW PASSPORT SAYING GOODBYE TO CH BY MONICA KUSAKA H ERRERO L ast year I had to renew my passport. It was a sad day when I received my new, crisp and untouched little blue book. It's not that I don't like change - I've had my fair share of change in life so far - it's just that my old passport was so well worn. It had visas. It had character. It had the dust of five different continents on it. I was so proud of my stamp col- lection, and the new one didn't do justice to what I knew as my life so far. I've been fortunate enough to have not only traveled out of the country, but to have come from an international family (as crazy as they are) and live abroad. In 2003, my family made our first big move to Tokyo, Japan. I was in seventh grade, and in my middle school prime - not the ideal time to move halfway across the world. But when my parents proposed the move, my sisters and I were sur- prisingly game for an enormous life change despite the fact that we never really had a strong inter- est in our Japanese heritage. I did have two Japanese names, I looked half-Japanese and my grandmoth- er's cooking was occasionally Jap- anese inspired, but otherwise, we were not well-acquainted with the culture and we definitely did not speak the language. We moved in July 2003, and I spent the rest of the summer get- ting lost around our neighbor- hood, repeating "Irashaimase" ("Welcome to our store") back to the understandably confused store attendants and participat- backgrounds and cultures that it seemed like there were 200 people M EA N S in my class. I made my first friend M E A N S at orientation. She was a Pales- tinian girl named Dima, and she I LD H O O D. spoke almost no English. I spent the next two months communicat- ing in gestures and sign language so our conversation was full of hand motions and awkward gig- ing in clubs my 8-year-old sister gling, but we ended up becoming created in her spare time (knitting friends, playing basketball on the club, book club, video game club). same team and graduating togeth- Entertainment is difficult when er five years later. you don't know the language, have During my stay in Japan, I trav- friends, the Internet or television. eled all around the country for different sports "I got to know the culture of tournaments, class excursions Japan through the people, and family trips. I got to know the festivals, food and everyday life." culture of Japan through the peo- Needless to say, I couldn't wait for ple, festivals, food and everyday school to start. life. I discovered one of my favor- For the next five years, I attend- ite food, natto, or fermented soy- ed the International School of the bean. I was asked if my mother Sacred Heart in Tokyo, an all- truly loved me because all I ever girl's international school. I only ate for lunch was a peanut but- had approximately 40 girls in my ter and jelly sandwich, instead grade each year, but I met so many of a freshly made bento box with interesting people from different seaweed cut into little trains. And I had the opportunity to really make a connection with an other- wise unfamiliar part of my heri- tage. Life is full of change. Since liv- ing in Japan, I've come back to the U.S. to go to college and my family has moved to Hong Kong, Shang- hai and now resides in New Delhi. After I graduate in December, I'm planning on joining them and div- ing into a new culture, a new expe- rience and getting my next stamp in my little blue book. When you move around as much as I have, with a mother who is constantly trying to get you to downsize and throw away non- essentials from your childhood, a passport means a lot more than just a form of legal documentation. For someone who isn't so artisti- cally inclined, a passport becomes a scrapbook of life's memories. The stamps serve as souvenirs of the incredible opportunities I have been lucky enough to have and the empty pages pushing me toward future adventures. -Monica Kusaka Herrero is an LSA senior L ' ;' . iu ; WALLENBERG lomat similar to Wallenberg while From Page 7B in Amsterdam, she said she felt a strong connection to his story and working to create awareness pro- wanted to help raise awareness grams in honor of Wallenberg. Ideas about Wallenberg. include instituting a lecture or video Butter and her family lived in about him at freshman orientation Amsterdam at the start of the war and holding a celebration on his and were waiting to receive coun- 100th birthday in August. terfeit passports from a man in While Ellsworth lauds the aware- Stockholm. However, when the ness efforts of the University's Wal- passports did not arrive, they were lenberg Medal and Lecture - an seized and taken to a concentration annual commemorative award and camp in the Netherlands. lecture that honors citizens who Butter said officials at the camp havedonehumanitarianwork-and protected the residents from being the memorials on North Campus senttoAuschwitz -one of the dead- and in Lorch Hall, he said Wallen- liest concentration camps in Poland berg's story is still widely unknown. - by attempting to obtain Ecuador- "It's wonderful that there's a Wal- ian passports that would allowthem lenberg medal. I think it's fabulous, go to a camp specifically developed but ... if you were to do a survey of for Jews who held passports from faculty here in LSA, or of students, I the U.S., Great Britain and other would be shocked if one in 10 knew countries. who he was," Ellsworth said. While these camps were purport- ed to be less perilous, Butter said A SURVIVOR REMEMBERS this often wasn't the case. Eventually Butter and her fam- Irene Butter, a former profes- ily arrived at the Bergen-Belsen sor in the School of Public Health concentration camp where they and co-founder of the Wallenberg remained for a year. Their health Medal and Lecture event, said she was quickly deteriorating when an felt a duty and desire as a Holocaust exchange deal was struck and a Red survivor to pay tribute to a man Cross train came to take her and her who saved the lives of thousands of family to Switzerland. Jews. Having been saved by a dip- "My mother was very sick, she hadn't been out of bed for months, and my father died on the train the second night out of the camp and that was very tragic," Butter said. By the time they arrived in Switzerland, her mother and brother were so ill that they were immediately rushed to the hospital. The Swiss government prohibited Butter from staying with her fam- ily in the hospital. She was homeless and she was taken a displaced per- son's camp in Algiers, Switzerland, where she remained until the war ended in May1945. Butter eventually headed for America on her own, and her broth- er and mother joined her the follow- ing year. Butter thrived in America. When she arrived to the University and started working at the School of Public Health, she was approached by Jamie Catlin, then manager for foundation relations at the Uni- versity's development office, about developing an endowment fund in Wallenberg's name. At first, she said they hoped that Wallenberg was still alive and would one day be able to receive the award. But as time passed and cer- tainty of his death increased, the shift focused to inspiring citizens to embark on humanitarian initiatives. "The main goal was for people to learn more about (Wallenberg), especially students and the Ann Arbor community, and so there was a lot of deliberation on what would be the best way to do it ... so that he would serve as a role model for this community and the model that we used was that one person can make a difference," Butter said. Butter spent five years helping to amass approximately $500,000 in funding before awarding the medal to the first recipient in 1990, Ellie Wiesel, a Holocaust survivor and award-winning author who has done vast work in advocating human rights. Butter said the program's intent is to inspire people to make a differ- ence in their community, no matter how minute the impact may seem. "We have to be vigilant, and be aware of the persecution, discrimi- nation, prejudice and suffering of other people and try to do what we can to help, Butter said. "... So many people think the problems are so huge, and I'm so small ... but that's not true. You can always make a dif- ference at some level. " THE BETTERMENT OF HUMANKIND John Godfrey, assistant dean for international education at Rack- ham Graduate School and chair of the Wallenberg Committee, said Wallenberg embodies the spirit of many University students seeking to get involved in humanitarian efforts. Godfrey added that Wallen- berg's vigor and voracious appetite for academia translated to his fight against the Nazis. "What he brought to that cri- sis was in a way that aptitudes he brought to Ann Arbor when he came here as an undergraduate, which was his resilience, determi- nation, openness and creativity in the face of challenge," Godfrey said. According to Godfrey, Wallen- berg's story is an important exam- ple of how to extend classroom experiences to the world and how to use knowledge from the University for the betterment of humankind. "Raoul Wallenberg is kind of a mythic prototype for this kind of an individual who's learning and whose commitment is not circum- scribed by the classroom itself," Godfrey said. "But who is phased out into the world and who wants to engage the world with what he's learned, and that was Wallenberg at Michigan." N < ;. '; . . ;-_ , _ 3 ' ' ;2 =., £ ,k: