HOLMDEL Equipped with a mic, powerpoint slides and her artwork, Holocaust Survivor Claire Boren talked to students about her story of survival.
More than 100 eighth graders listened to Boren’s story, on Nov. 7 at William R. Satz Middle School’s auditorium, located at 24 Crawfords Corner Road.
Boren was born in Mizocz in Eastern Poland, now Ukraine. Boren, along with her mother, lived in hiding from October 1942, when Jews of Mizocz were murdered, until the spring of 1944, when the Russians liberated the area, according to a prepared statement from the Office of the Superintendent of Schools.
“I feel that I want to share my story and to show you the extremes of racism and hatred. We are experiencing some of that today and I just hope that every one of you would stand up against injustice, whether it’s incidents online or if you see someone being bullied,” Boren said.
Referring to the white nationalist groups protest that occurred in August in Charlottesville, Virginia, Boren said, “That is why I am here, because when I saw those Neo-Nazis marching and screaming ‘the Jews will not replace us.’ It was a horrifying image, it was something I thought I would never see in this country, so that is why I am here.”
The speaking event was organized by English teacher Marissa Crimoli who contacted The Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education (Chhange), located at Brookdale Community College, to arrange for Boren to speak to the school’s 8th grade students.
“We study the Holocaust in the eighth grade. I teach eighth grade English and we look at the diary of Anne Frank and lots of other primary and secondary sources. I actually met Mrs. Boren last spring at a workshop and she talked about teaching students about Holocaust and genocide through art,” Crimoli said. “So both myself and the art teacher here, Denise King, did a cross curricular unit where students took their knowledge of the Holocaust and genocide and created works of art that were on display at Brookdale. It was an exhibit called ‘Through Their Eyes.’”
Boren is a past-president of the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County and since getting involved with Chhange, Boren regularly speaks in public about her childhood experiences, according to a prepared statement.
While living in hiding with her mother from age four to five and a half in Poland, Boren said one of the scary moments for her was when she was hiding in a shed waiting for her mother to return.
Her mother being the only person she trusted, Boren said, “She was the only one I spent my whole time with. I was sort of attached to her. For a long time I would not go to sleep unless she was right next to me.”
Boren said when her and her mother were hiding, the most difficult part was when they were hidden by a farmer who dug a hole under planks that pigs would stand on.
“It was a dark hole, it was like a coffin size, and that was the part that I found just horrifying and it was just in that hole that I just lost touch with reality. When my mother realized that she took me away from there and we went into a village. I was with kids and got over it,” Boren said.
She later learned that her father had escaped the original round up of Jews and was also in hiding until someone betrayed him, according to Boren.
When her and her mother were hiding in the woods in Poland, Boren said, she developed dysentery, had sores on her knees, and was malnourished.
“I did not know what was going on, I just knew that there was this horrible thing happening. I knew that I couldn’t speak or raise my voice, because when I was with the group of people I could not speak. When the Russians liberated us and I was in this room and they were being very nice and giving us food and everything I remember crawling under a table and hiding. I did not speak for a while or if I spoke I spoke in whispers. I still speak softly,” Boren said.
Boren said while hiding in the woods, she and her mother were always hungry.
“My mother used to say when we first went into hiding, I used to complain if I had bread with nothing to put on it, after a while I wish I just had bread. There was nothing, nothing to eat,” Boren said.
Once she and her mother were liberated by the Russians, Boren said they were placed in a displaced persons camp where her mother gave birth to her sister. They then moved to the United States when her sister was about two years old and lived in New York.
Having first started getting into art in 1995, Boren throughout her presentation showed students various paintings and sculptures she created over the years.
Students also had an opportunity to ask Boren questions about her story, artwork and experiences.
When asked by a student why she choose art, Boren said, “I also write in a journal, but mainly I came to it sort of by accident when I was doing this workshop and I created this piece. I use to work before that a long time ago doing pretty watercolors, but it was only when I started doing these abstract pieces that they could express exactly how I felt.”
Boren said that she has created artwork that not only relates to her experiences during the Holocaust, but also to more recent events such as 9/11 and the Central Park Jogger case in 1989.
Some of her artwork Boren showed included pieces called: Trap I-V, No Exit, Central Park Jogger, In the Polish Woods, Dogma, No Space, Existence, Public Hanging, Home I, Home II.
“When I did the workshop and I started creating images from my past, it became compulsive for me. I was just going on and on and on, because it was a way for me to deal with my past, to remember it, but also partly to gain my healing medium. Whenever I was upset or something was going on in my life I would just work,” Boren said.
For more information about Chhange visit www.chhange.org/about.
For additional information about Boren’s art visit www.claireborenart.com.
Contact Vashti Harris at [email protected].