Holocaust Survivor Tells Her Story

Holocaust survivor Judith Altmann held seventh- and eighth-graders at Cloonan Middle School spellbound last Thursday as she relived her personal history as a teenage girl trying to survive the Nazi death camps in her native Czechoslovakia.

The Daily Stamford asked three eighth-grade girls—Priya Gada, Samiksha Kollipara and Kiana Nieves—to report on Altmann's presentation from the perspective of their classmates.

Here is their report:

Mrs. Altmann has gone through so much. She survived the Holocaust and the concentration camps and Hitler's wrath. She has seen so many things, at such a young age, which must have scared her. So you would think that she would be unstable and troubled, but she is not.

She travels the world talking to students and telling them how good we have it to be free. She tells us about a time when mankind showed its dark side and its capability for destruction and cruelty. She is using her experiences to tell us that injustice is wrong, no matter what the form and we should stop it anytime we see it.

We have learned a lot from her visit, and it has changed the way we see mankind. While we can accomplish great things and travel great distances, we are also capable of great harm and terrible things, even to our own kind.

We need to learn about this now when we are young so that it never happens again. We should not only see the Holocaust as a dark spot in the history of mankind; but we should also make it a time of learning. We should learn exactly what people are capable of and know that we should use our powers for good. Listening to Mrs. Altmann speak has given us much to think about and it is an experience that I will never forget.

Mrs. Altmann has every reason to hate but she turns it into understanding and forgiveness. Her terrifying experiences as a young girl horrified so many students. We could hear the pain in her voice as she told how her father and she separated. Her father told her, "Judy you will live." It was said so strongly we all felt the pain.

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