Survivor recalls the Holocaust

   MONROE — Standing before a room full of captivated Applegarth Middle School seventh-graders, Ilse Loeb recalled one of the miracles that kept her alive during the Holocaust.

By: Stephanie Brown
   MONROE — Standing before a room full of captivated Applegarth Middle School seventh-graders, Ilse Loeb recalled one of the miracles that kept her alive during the Holocaust.
   "We were cutting down a tree for firewood at the edge of the forest where we had been hiding," Ms. Loeb recalled in her thick Austrian accent. "We wanted it to fall in the direction of the woods, but it started to fall towards the road.
   "As it was swaying back and forth, a Nazi Gestapo jeep appeared," she continued. "No sooner did it pass did the tree fell into the road. That day, a few seconds saved my life."
   Ms. Loeb, a resident of the Ponds, was one of six Holocaust survivors who spoke to the school’s Team Spectrum on March 22.
   Prior to the event, students in Team Spectrum had been studying the Holocaust. However, team teachers agreed some things can’t be learned from a book. They invited Ms. Loeb, Esther Clifford, Fred Spiegel, Tom Wolf, Judith Sherman, and Jeanne Goudsmith — who spoke on behalf of her late husband, Max — to the school.
   "Listening to someone tell firsthand accounts of their experience, you really get a sense of what it was like," language arts teacher Bonnie Crisco said. "The kids respond to the stories, which are very emotional."
   The seventh-graders in Gary Katzowsky’s class listened intently to Ms. Loeb discuss her story of loss, perseverance and hope.
   Born in Vienna, Ms. Loeb was 13 years old when World War II broke out.
   For a while, she stayed with foster parents in Holland. During that time, she kept in contact with her parents, who were both still in Austria. Her mother would write letters regularly.
   Then one day the letters stopped. It was only recently that Ms. Loeb learned the terrible fate of her parents, who perished in Belzec, a concentration camp in Poland.
   "Because of the horrible way my parents died and how millions of other Jews died, I made a vow to speak out," Ms. Loeb said, her voice cracking. "I always get emotional when I talk about my parents. I can talk about my own experience, but when I talk about them…"
   When the Nazis occupied Holland, Ms. Loeb took to hiding in the forest. Although she managed to survive until 1945, her journey wasn’t over.
   After the war, many Jews suffered psychologically, she said.
   "We had to cope with our experiences alone, and it eaffected some people very badly," she said. "I have some friends who have not even told their story to their own children."
   Ms. Sherman kept silent for over 50 years about her experience as a Jewish "hidden child" and concentration camp survivor. But then, during the mid-1990s, she spoke out for the first time.
   After auditing a college course at Princeton University, Ms. Sherman noticed that the professor was having a difficult time teaching the Holocaust. She told him she was a survivor, and he convinced her to share her story with the class.
   Ms. Sherman has been speaking regularly ever since.
   "I speak because I feel I don’t have a choice," she said. "The story has to be told."
   Other survivors said they also feel compelled to speak out.
   Mr. Wolf discussed the importance of painting the portrait behind the facts in order to prevent anything like the Holocaust from happening again.
   "Overnight the laws changed and a Jew became an enemy of the state," he said. "As long as we talk about it and tell the kids, it won’t become just a page in history."
   Fred Spiegel said he was compelled to share his experience by his observations of the apathy of many ordinary German people during the Holocaust.
   Mr. Spiegel said his book, "Once the Acacias Bloomed: Memories of a Childhood Lost," was meant to drive home his point. The book’s title comes from Hebrew poet Chaim Nachman Bialik’s poem "Be-Ir ha-Haregah" ("In the City of Slaughter"). Mr. Spiegel said that after witnessing a pogrom in the Ukraine in which thousands of Jews were killed, the poet wrote "the sun shone, the acacias bloomed, and the slaughterer slaughtered."
   "It was meant to be a comment on the natural way in which the Jewish people were exterminated," Mr. Spiegel said.
   Jeanne Goudsmith spoke on behalf of her husband, who passed away died a little over a year ago.
   Mr. Goudsmith was only four4 years old, living in Amsterdam when the war started. He survived because his mother sent him to live with a non-Jewish family. For five years he pretended to be part of that family, forsaking his own identity, Ms. Goudsmith said.
   "Imagine being a little child and having to pretended to be someone else, like there was something wrong with you," Ms. Goudsmith said.
   Perhaps it was his experience as a young boy — being forced to keep quiet about his past — that made her husband adamant about speaking out as an adult, Ms. Goudsmith mused.
   "He found it very necessary to tell his story," She said. "He would had been very happy that I did this."
   The survivors also reflected on how their Holocaust experience had eaffected their relationship with God.
   Ms. Sherman said she still believes in her religion, but her experience has changed the nature of her belief.
   "I came from a background where belief in God was taken for granted," Ms. Sherman said. "I am still a believer, but I am much more challenging of God, much more questioning about where was God, what’s the function of God, and how should we related to God."
   The students seemed understood the gravity of having the survivors share some of their most inmate life experiences.
   "I can’t imagine what going through something like that must be like," said Jenna Giaquinto. "It’s important to pass the story on generation to generation so it’s not repeated."