Triad students hear first-hand accounts of the Holocaust during Remembrance Day

Nearly 20 teenagers from Early College in Winston-Salem gather at small tables with their bagels, coffee, and juice. There's anticipation in the air. This group of middle and high school students is here to learn about the horrors of war and the heroism it inspired from a Jewish author, an Auschwitz concentration camp survivor, and a Kindertransport escapee. This recent event is part of Holocaust Remembrance Day, which provided a platform for a unique, immersive educational experience in the Triad. 

Each student read the book Child of the Forest, chronicling the true story of a young Jewish girl from Poland and her two-year struggle to elude Nazis during WWII by hiding out in the woods. 

Author Jack Grossman is the first to address the group via Zoom.

Grossman, who lives in Mooresville, North Carolina, collaborated with the protagonist Charlene Schiff in writing the book. At the age of 12, she lost her mother and survived on her own for the next two years, 50 miles from a concentration camp, and was hunted in the forest by Nazi soldiers and their sympathizers. She foraged for food, drinking from puddles, and eating insects, worms, and rodents.

“I mean we have to tell it like it is,” says Grossman. “We can't sugarcoat history. It is what it is. We have to learn from our mistakes. We have to learn what can happen with unchecked hate. We have to be very careful and I don't think that hiding or distorting or disinforming — students especially — that that's going to do any good. I think in the long run that's going to be very harmful.”

Schiff, who died in 2013, eventually immigrated to the United States. Grossman says she made it her life's work through public speaking to eradicate what she called the four evil “I”s: ignorance, intolerance, indifference, and injustice.

“And they're very evident today as they have been throughout the history of humankind,” says Grossman. “But if we can eradicate those things, we can come a long way. I think she was afraid of history repeating itself as are a lot of people.”

Following a Q&A with the author and a short break, students returned to hear 92-year-old Hungarian Jew and Auschwitz survivor Zev Harel speak via Zoom about his personal experiences as a boy, raised in a Jewish ghetto, and torn away from his family members who were later killed by Nazis.

“They put us on the cattle cars and the cattle cars moved and after about 12 hours we arrived at Auschwitz,” says Harel. “And we arrived at Auschwitz ... it was a beautiful night — a night full of stars, but stench.”

Harel describes the poison showers and cremations that took the lives of millions during the war, and how an SS guard saved his life as old men and children were separated and selected for extermination.

“And I remember the words that he used," says Harel, speaking in Russian. "‘Don't tell anyone you are 14. Tell them you are 17.'” 

Harel says when he was asked his birthdate, he took that advice to heart, saying he was born in 1927 instead of 1930.  

Harel eventually worked his way through three different concentration camps. After the war, he eventually immigrated to the U.S., got his high school GED at age 30, and later a doctorate. He ended his talk by encouraging students to strive in strengthening their families and communities, and then he took questions from the students.

Among them was Early College freshman Brendan Thull.

“He seemed so compassionate for others which I can understand. He could grow so much compassion considering how much hardship that he had been through,” says Thull. “And hearing him talk about his experiences with the Holocaust, I could almost feel like I was there, and feel the emotions that he was trying to tell us because it was so impactful. And the way he described it was brilliant.”

Harel wasn't the only Holocaust survivor to speak. Following his talk, students gather around Margot Lobree, a petite, energetic octogenarian with bright white hair. Although dwarfed in stature by the teenagers surrounding her, she confidently leads them through a tour of a 17-panel traveling exhibit provided by the North Carolina Council on the Holocaust. It tells the story of the Kindertransport, chronicling the plight of the 10,000 children rescued by train from Nazi-held countries before and during 1940.

Lobree was one of those “train children.”  While that train undoubtedly saved Lobree's life, it also took her away from her family at the age of 13, forcing her to live with strangers in a foreign land, never to see her parents again. She cautions that while her experience may already be history, what she sees today in Ukraine brings back many memories.

“Seeing families saying goodbye to each other, possibly never to see each other again, parents sending children away by themselves to make sure that they are safe, it again proves what a vicious leader with possibly a disturbed mind can do to innocent people,” says Lobree. “How vigilant we must be always to protect ourselves from such leaders and to protect our freedom.”

Middle College of Forsyth County social studies teacher Amber Sluder helped organize the remembrance event. She calls the need to never forget as important as ever, especially in today's media-rich landscape where people can be easily manipulated as they were in pre-war Germany.

“You know with all of these books that are being banned and these stories that they're saying can't be told, I don't think you have to be scared of a story,” says Sluder. “You should be willing to read a story, evaluate a story, and decide what it means to you and how it's going to impact your life. You shouldn't be scared of information. You should be scared of people who are trying to keep the information from you.”

For Sluder, the students' level of engagement was best defined by a noticeable absence. Throughout the day-long event, the only cell phones to be seen were those capturing photos with a Holocaust survivor.

 *Editor's note: When this story was originally published, Zev Harel's actual year of birth (1930)  and the year he told the SS (1927) were reversed.