Simple talk holds big
lesson for youngsters
BY LARRY RAMER
Staff Writer
MARLBORO — A Jewish woman who survived the Holocaust by hiding in the home of a Christian family spoke to fifth-graders at the Marlboro Elementary School recently about her experiences and ideas. The children also had the opportunity to view some of the pictures that Nelly Toll drew during her two years in hiding.
Toll, who now works as a college literature professor, said she was about 7 years old and was living in Poland when she followed her parents to the home of their Christian friend.
"My mother said not to look if the police stopped her and my father, but to keep going to an address [she gave me], where a kind couple will open the door … I kept hoping nobody would stop us and I wanted to be invisible," Toll told the children.
"Some brave Christians risked their lives to hide Jews and save them," Toll explained.
Toll’s father was not able to successfully hide from the Germans — he was captured by the Nazis while trying to rescue his sister and parents, Toll said.
Cooped up inside a room in the house with her mother, Toll became bored and discovered art as a way to keep busy and express her ideas. Of course, Toll could not go to school, but she painted pictures of girls walking with their teachers and children eating together.
She could not have a dog — "Jews were afraid dogs would give away their hiding places," she said — but she painted a picture of a dog and puppies. Inspired by the book "Uncle Tom’s Cabin" and her own experiences, Toll also painted a picture of a woman with a baby who was hiding with a "nice, kind lady."
Other scenes depicted by Toll when she was in hiding included the woods where she was once forced to flee when soldiers approached and children playing ball. Toll said one of the children she painted may have been her cousin who was killed in a concentration camp.
The fifth-graders viewed a slide show presentation that included all of Toll’s pictures, which are compiled in a book she wrote about her experiences. The book, "Behind A Secret Window," was published in 1993 and is appropriate for children and adults, she said.
Toll described the Holocaust to the chil-dren in simple terms and urged them to combat prejudice and racism.
"A bad man named Hitler decided that all Jews have to be killed … and that anyone who is not blond and blue-eyed should not exist. Hitler said even babies who were just 2 days old had to be killed because they were Jewish," said Toll, who explained that Hitler blamed the Jews for the bad economic times Germany was experiencing in the years before World War II.
In one camp, only 100 children out of 15,000 who had originally been imprisoned there survived the war, the author told the children.
"We must learn from this not to hate others because they are a different religion or color. … we must always treat everybody equally and with respect," Toll said.
The author urged the children to combat injustice.
"If you see a kid being beaten up, stand up and say it’s wrong to do that, or call somebody," she said.
After Toll completed her presentation, she asked the children what they would remember from her talk.
"We should decide how to treat people not from their eyes and skin color, but from what they do," one child said.
"I will make sure the Holocaust doesn’t repeat," another fifth-grader added.
"Everyone counts no matter if they’re Jewish or Christian, and hair and eye color don’t matter," a third student said.