By Nicole M. Wells, Special Writer
MONROE — Living in hiding and perpetual fear. Being betrayed and handed over to almost certain death. Bread made of sawdust and little else. Shower stalls that poured poison gas instead of water. Being subjected to medical experiments. Crematories and family and friends who went up in a column of smoke.
For two hours on Sunday, Oct. 28, a handful of students and teachers from Monroe Township High School took a nightmarish trip down memory lane. They listened in silence as Holocaust survivors breathed life into the impersonal text of their history books and intimated things that seem unimaginable today.
From 11 a.m. to 1 p.m., survivors from The Henry Ricklis Holocaust Memorial Committee shared their stories with teachers and students from Monroe Township High School during a luncheon honoring the survivors at the Monroe Community Center.
The Henry Ricklis group is made up of survivors, people who lost loved ones in the Holocaust and interested members of the public. The group meets monthly to discuss the annual programs it sponsors and the survivors regularly speak about their experiences at schools and other venues.
Having liberated the concentration camp at Dachau in southern Germany at 21 years old, Trenton native Henry Ricklis began to speak to students at public high schools in Union County in 1975 about what he had witnessed. In 1982, he was invited to serve on Governor Kean’s Advisory Council on Holocaust Education in the Public Schools, the forerunner to the Commission on Holocaust Education, mandating Holocaust education at all grade levels in elementary and high school. Mr. Ricklis moved to Monroe Township in 1984 and founded the Henry Ricklis group to help educate high school students about the inhumanity of what he had seen.
This past summer, a group of students and teachers from Monroe Township High School traveled to Germany, Poland and the Czech Republic in an effort to better understand the events of the Holocaust. From June 24 to July 3, the group visited concentration camps, such as Bergen-Belsen and Auschwitz-Birkenau, and the Warsaw Ghetto.
”To actually be there is entirely different,” Laurie Gang, of Monroe, said. “It’s not like when you read about it in books or see it in movies.”
Ms. Gang accompanied her son, Tyler, 15, on the trip, which was organized by EF Tours. Tyler heard about the trip in his history class.
”It was heavy,” Tyler said. “It felt so different (being at the camps). Every step you take, someone might have died there.”
EF Tours is an educational touring company with 47 years of experience and schools and offices in more than 50 countries, according to the company. It is accredited by the National Council for Private School Accreditation and the Middle States Association of Colleges and Schools Commissions on Elementary and Secondary Schools, among others.
Several of the students who participated in the trip were at the luncheon and met the survivors for the first time.
”Today, meeting these people, it’s an honor,” Amber Kelly, 16, said. “I’m honored to be in their presence.”
Amber said the trip opened the students’ eyes up to “so many things about history.”
For history buff Andrew McCartin, 18, meeting the survivors was a unique experience, one his parents never had.
”I was only here for two hours but I feel like that two hours is going to have a lasting effect on me,” Andrew said. “Having the privilege to be in the presence of people like this is not an everyday thing.”
Several of the students spoke about their visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau in 100 degree plus heat and the pact it inspired to not complain. Knowing what the camp’s prisoners had to endure, and comparing it to the extreme heat they were complaining about, really made them stop and think, they said. They made a pact to not complain because what they were experiencing couldn’t begin to compare to the suffering that had taken place at the site, they said.
”It (the trip) was life-changing, definitely,” Ayushi Bhatt, 16, said. “It was just a completely different perspective.”
Far from being antiquated memories of little value today, the survivors’ experiences can be linked directly to present-day bullying, according to Tyler.
The victims of the Holocaust, the survivors as well as those who didn’t make it, were victims of bullying first, he said. Taken to the extreme, bullying can have the same kind of horrific impact as the Holocaust and therefore cannot be tolerated, he said.
”After this trip I got a much better understanding of bullying,” Tyler said.
Ms. Gang also made the connection between the atrocities of the Holocaust and bullying, praising survivors from the Henry Ricklis group for speaking and getting the anti-bullying message out to students.
Like an increasing number of schools today, Monroe Township High School has implemented an anti-bullying plan of action and has assembled a school safety team, comprised of administration, guidance staff, teacher’s representatives, a parent representative and anti-bullying specialists.
Ultimately, the overall message of the survivors was that of working together to help each other and teaching people, especially the younger generations, to love instead of hate.
”The survivors, they’re not so distant now,” Ayushi said. “We feel like we know them. Like we’re one community and that’s the whole point.”
