The shocked eighth graders were the same age as Holocaust survivor Mickey Warshawski when the Auschwitz Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, ordered him to the gas chambers.
Students at Crestwood Middle School sat with eyes wide open, at the edge of their seats, as Mickey told them about how the Nazis killed his family and made his life miserable as a teenager at the Auschwitz concentration camp.
Paul Goldstein, son of Treblinka concentration camp prisoners, also told the story of “what hate can do” to seventh graders at Crestwood on the 81st anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz, now observed as Holocaust Remembrance Day, on Tuesday, Jan. 27.
Mickey told of how political conditions started deteriorating slowly, one lost liberty at a time, as the Nazis took control and began their reign of terror.
Despite the antisemitic warning signs, he said, most Jews remained in denial and didn’t realize that inhuman atrocities were about to begin.
Life changed when Mickey was almost 10. He went to play soccer, using tied up rags as a ball, when he came upon a horrific scene.
“Two Nazi goons shot to death a young man we knew from synagogue,” he recalled. “The Nazis dipped his hat in the warm puddled blood and wrote ‘JEW’ on the street next to his body. The adults didn’t believe anyone was capable of this kind of hate.”
Shortly thereafter, Jews were rounded up and crammed into ghettos, city slums cordoned off, surrounded by barbed wire and guard towers. “Our old lives of peace and comfort were over. Nine of us were forced to live in a tiny room,” Mickey continued. “Some people sleeping on tables, others sleeping under the tables. The Nazis were intentionally starving us to death, a small piece of bread and two potatoes each were supposed to last a week.”
The family was barely hanging on when Mickey’s mother said, “If we stay here, we will starve. Let’s all go to the railroad station where the Nazis have promised bread and sugar.”
But at the rail station, the family was ripped apart and forced into over-crammed cattle rail cars headed for Auschwitz. That was the last time Mickey saw his mother and sisters.
Conditions at Auschwitz were horrific with prisoners subjected to constant beatings, insults and cursing. The Nazis did everything within their power to rob prisoners of hope. Mickey was forced to work hard labor. “One day a Nazi-crazed SS guard whipped us and caused a heavy piece of equipment to crush my leg,” Mickey said. “We had no names, only numbers tattooed on our arms. One day the Nazi Doctor of Death, Josef Mengele, saw my condition and marked my number down for the gas chambers.”
With tears in his eyes, Mickey described how his 14-year-old life was saved by a Hungarian medical orderly, Nicolai Sebastian, who Mickey tearfully calls “the Holy Man of Auschwitz.”
“The morning I was supposed to be delivered to death, he changed my number for that of a man who died that night in the camps,” Mickey recalled. “I was saved, hidden and soon thereafter, the allies liberated the camp.”
The students sat in shock. Most hadn’t realized that humans were capable of such hate.
“The thing that surprised me most were the atrocities,” student Mason Ramdas said. “I never knew [people] could be so cruel to each other.”
Son of Holocaust survivors Sam and Sabina Goldstein, speaker Paul Goldstein hammered home that exact message — “this is what hate can do” — while he described his parents’ experience at Treblinka. Now that his parents have passed, he feels a moral obligation to tell their stories.
“Now, the generation of first-hand witnesses has nearly passed, and those who bore witness are sadly ever fewer,” Goldstein said. “As a second-generation survivor, it is up to me to step into my parents’ shoes and tell their stories.”
Goldstein fully captivated his seventh-grade audience. “Think about this,” he said. “During the Holocaust, over 6 million Jews were killed, including 1.5 million children! If you held a moment of silence for each one, you would be silent for 11.5 years.”
The students asked a lot of questions about pain and suffering, trying to wrap their minds around cruelty. Seventh grader Hashin Qasmieh pointed to 20,000 children killed in Gaza and asked, “How can we prevent genocide?”
The room became silent. Goldstein looked out at the cafeteria packed with children. He said, “I once asked my father where was God while the Holocaust was happening. His response was, ‘We were religious people. We believed God would help us. We should have fought back. We never did.’ So, my response is the same for today’s kids… Fight. Don’t wait for someone else to help. Don’t be a complicit bystander. When you get older, vote. Work to get the right people in office and have the courage of your convictions.”
Teacher Daniel Campbell runs an excellent Holocaust awareness honors course, whose students were asked their opinions before and after the presentations.
Valentina Latino seemed to speak for a lot of students when she said, “These stories really hit you when you see someone in person, so your empathy really grows.”
She went on to say, “Never hate on different people. Just because they may look different from you does not mean they are not human like you. We are all the same with just different attributes. We should learn from history.”
Eighth grader Leslie Victor agreed, saying, “The advice I have is that we need to start teaching kids at a young age to not be discriminatory and treat everyone with respect, as well as showing them the effects of how far hatred and discrimination can go.”
Gabriel Keith added, “We should always stand up for people who are being treated unkindly or left out because of who they are. It is important to learn about different cultures and religions so that we can understand and respect our neighbors instead of fearing them, and we must follow leaders who use kind words and make sure that the laws protect everyone equally.”
But these students are growing up hearing divisive, hateful rhetoric, suggesting people in other political parties are “unAmerican.” All 14 students stated unambiguously that they are under the impression that some sort of genocide feels imminent in America.
Mason Ramdas added, “Some advice that I have is to reduce the amount of power that Immigration and Customs Enforcement has. They are the reason that this country has become so dangerous to immigrants. Being an immigrant myself, I feel horrible when I think about the wrongdoings happening, and I think about how if I came to this country this could have been me.”
After the presentation, Johny Zhen added, “The best advice I have for preventing genocide would just be to educate newer generations about the atrocities of genocides like the Holocaust.”
