Meeting a Holocaust survivor was an experience that I will never be able to forget. There is only so much about the Holocaust that I was able to understand from textbooks and movies, but being able to shake the hand of a person who was able to live though and carry on after such a horrible experience was unforgettable. I was impressed at how willing Gabi Held, the survivor that I met, was to share his story. Bringing all those painful memories to the surface is a sort of bravery that I admire in the highest degree. When I first watched his video testimony I was able to see what a dynamic person he was, however getting to sit down and speak to him was a totally different experience. Watching the emotions change as he described his experiences put all the research in perspective for me.
I was in charge of filming the classroom visits, rather than teaching, however observing the students learn about the Holocaust was rewarding to me because I could see how our internship was impacting them. I was surprised and amazed at how willing the students were to learn and discuss the different topics that were brought up in the visits. Seeing their enthusiasm made me feel like this internship really could make a difference in the way that they think about the Holocaust in the future and the way they could connect the event to modern genocides occurring the world.
Five years from now, I hope that the students remember the real emotion that the survivors expressed as they were telling their stories because that is what brings humanity to the testimony of people who made it out of the Holocaust survive. Numbers and statistics in textbooks are sometimes hard to grasp, but the painful look in the eyes of a survivor when they speak about their experiences is concrete and immediately understandable. I’ll never lose the look on Gabi Held’s face when spoke to us about how he stole a jar of animal fat and forced his dying mother to drink it in order to save her life. The real fear and desperation of that moment in his life shown on his face is what now helps me to understand the horrors of the Holocaust, not the historical facts that I learned about in school.
It is important to remember the Holocaust because there is evidence that genocides like it happen over and over again throughout the world. The Holocaust is an event that represents the weaknesses in humanity and the potential for human beings too remain idle those terrible times of genocide. Teaching young students about the details of the Holocaust and the different ways that it relates to more modern genocides will encourage them to stand up for what is right when they’re placed in difficult situations.
Wagner College and this internship taught me more about the Holocaust than I ever would have been able to learn in a classroom. As time goes by, more and more survivors are passing away, and I am now able to fully appreciate the blessing it was for me to be able to work with them. Students on Staten Island should be aware of the community of survivors that are living in their community so that they can appreciate them while they are living, as well as have a better understanding about the history of their community. Without this internship, I probably would have never heard a survivor testimony in person, and without that experience, my understanding of the Holocaust would have been missing the humanity and emotion that makes the whole event so important and real.