New York Teacher
“FROM THE CZARS TO CITY HALL TO THE GULAG”
Mar 15, 2007 4:08 PM
When David Pakter approached the majestic City Hall, built in 1805, he thought of his grandfather who fled to America to escape the Russian Czars. Pakter was about to get an award as a Teacher of the Year from the Mayor of the City New York, whose own immigrant grandparents heard the news about the promise of America.
The Czars were a rough breed of plutocrats. They didn’t like peasants and Jewish workers were particularly hated and blamed for society’s shortcomings, from the lousy state of the economy to trying to assassinate the Czar. The word “pogrom” is too easily thrown about these days, but for the Jews of Russia, it was a life of plundering, pillaging and killings at the hands of the Czarist police force.
By the turn of the 20th century, more than one million Jews had fled Russia for America.
The era was described by Mary Anti in Irving Howe’s classic “The World of Our Fathers.” She said: “America was in everybody’s mouth. Businessmen talked of it over their accounts; the market women made up their quarrels that they might discuss it from stall to stall; people who had relatives in the famous land went around reading their letters for the enlightenment of less fortunate folk…children played at emigrating; old folks shook their sage heads over the evening fire, and prophesied no good for those who braved the terrors of the sea and the foreign goal beyond it; all talked of it, but scarcely anyone knew one true fact about this magic land.”
The Czarist pogroms happened long before the world heard of Kristellnacht and Treblinka, but the intent was the same. It was the Jews fault.
America, above all else, offered hope; that was David Pakter’s grandfather’s inspiration as he packed up his family and set sail for New York harbor.
When Pakter got his award nearly one hundred years after his grandfather’s journey, there were no DOE bureaucrats ensconced in the Tweed courthouse trying to get rid of honest teachers who reported wrongdoing. It, too, is a majestic building, built by a political boss, William Marcy Tweed, who stole millions during its construction. Tweed operated in secrecy, the master of the no-bid contract for everything from garbage removal to streetcar franchises. The courthouse was saved from the wrecker’s ball in the late 1970s but is now closed to the public-an entirely appropriate metaphor for the Department of Education itself, as are its operations which are shrouded in secrecy.
Pakter thought how palatial City Hall was and how his grandfather would be so proud of him for honoring the family’s tradition of hard work. But he also knew that he was accepting the award on behalf of his students, who had helped make him a great teacher.
It was, he remembered, one of the happiest days of his
life and he still treasures the video showing the Mayor shaking his hand and
congratulating him. He had no inkling that DOE bosses and doctors could some day
change his life, “change it utterly” in the words of Yeats. It was a long way
from the Czars to City Hall to the DOE gulag.
