Tuesday, February 24, 2009 10:30 PM CST
Survivor: Holocaust lessons could deter more atrocities
By NATHANIEL WEST, Staff Writer
nwest@jg-tc.com
SULLIVAN — To survive a Nazi concentration camp in World War II, Marion Blumenthal Lazan played a simple game.
She vowed if she could locate four nearly identical pebbles in the otherwise lifeless earth, she and her father, mother and brother all would live through the ordeal.
“I always found my four pebbles,” she said, noting she sometimes secured her treasure in a safe place should she have difficulties discovering four more pebbles the next time she played.
“Above all, don’t ever, ever give up hope,” Lazan told students from Sullivan Middle School and Sullivan High School on Monday.
But her tale should serve as more than just an inspiration during difficult times, said Lazan, author of “Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story.” She urged Sullivan students to take her experiences to heart as they ponder ongoing atrocities such as the possible genocide in Darfur, and she urged the young people to repeat stories like hers to their children and grandchildren so future generations avoid another Holocaust.
“When (survivors) are not here any longer, it is you who will have to bear witness” to the Holocaust, she said. “By listening, I hope you will prevent our past from becoming your future.”
To keep the Holocaust from happening again, students must demonstrate and teach their children “love, respect and tolerance for one another,” Lazan said.
She added that the war in Sudan or the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks would not have occurred had lessons from the Holocaust been learned by everyone. “Let us always respect the right of others to their beliefs,” Lazan said.
“We must be true to ourselves and not blindly follow the leader” like the Germans followed Adolf Hitler, Lazan also said.
Her brother, Albert Blumenthal, who lives with his wife in California, may have witnessed even more heinous acts while in the notorious Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, although he does not speak of them. Lazan said her brother refused to have children of his own, and he remains opposed to organized religion.
Lazan herself said it is still difficult discussing the Nazi persecution and life in the concentration camp. “When I talk about those years, it is like talking about a nightmare,” she said.
“The constant foul odor, the fear (and) the constant horror of death is indescribable.”
Her views on forgiving the perpetrators of the Holocaust are contrary to those of some other survivors, such as Corrie ten Boom — a Dutch Christian who helped Jews escape before she herself was imprisoned in a concentration camp.
“Those directly responsible can never be forgiven,” Lazan said. “For them to be so cruel and so evil is impossible to understand.”
Her mother, Ruth Blumenthal, is alive and well in Long Island, N.Y. She is 101.
Lazan’s father died of typhus just six weeks after the Russian army liberated their train — en route from Bergen-Belsen to an extermination camp — on April 23, 1945.
Lazan was in the Bergen-Belsen camp at the same time as Anne Frank, whose diary about life in hiding from the Nazis introduced generations of schoolchildren to the Holocaust. Lazan said she did not recall meeting Frank personally, although it is possible the two saw each other.
“My story picks up where hers left off,” Lazan said.
Her family fled Germany to the Netherlands in 1939, as the restrictions on Jews increased. Lazan was 4.
Just one month before they were to leave for America, the Blumenthals were trapped in Holland when the Nazis invaded. Her family initially was locked in the Westerbork detention facility in the Netherlands, but they were transported in 1944 to Bergen-Belsen in Germany.
Lazan was 9 at the time.
Food was almost nonexistent. Detainees were given bread only once a week, if they were lucky. When she was liberated, Lazan weighed only 35 pounds. She was 10 years old.
Prisoners were forced to stand, sometimes all day, while they were counted. In freezing conditions, Lazan said, extremities were heated through “the warmth of our own urine.”
Sanitation also was extremely rare. Detainees, who had heard about the gas chambers at other camps, were marched into the showers once a month.
“We were never sure when the faucets were turned on what would come out — water or gas,” Lazan said.
She recalled seeing a wagon loaded with dead bodies for the first time. “Death was an everyday occurrence,” she said.
“We as children saw things that no one, no matter what the age, should ever have to see.”
She also played her pebble game.
“This game gave me something to hold on to, some distant hope,” she said.
In April 1945, Lazan and her family were loaded on a train bound for a death camp. The trip was slowed by frequent attacks from Allied bombardment.
Fourteen days after they departed, the train stopped for the final time, with the approach of the Russian army.
Lazan credited her mother with the “inner strength and fortitude that finally saw us through.”
Her family emigrated to the United States in 1948, arriving in New Jersey three years to the day after their liberation. They found a home in Peoria, where 13-year-old Lazan had to learn a new language and culture.
However, she still managed to graduate from Peoria Central High School at age 18. Soon after, she married Nathaniel Lazan, her high school sweetheart. They now have three grown children and nine grandchildren.
“Despite all the terrible things that happened to me as a child, my life today is full and rewarding,” Lazan said.
Contact Nathaniel West at nwest@jg-tc.com or 238-6860.
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longtimegone wrote on Feb 24, 2009 5:33 PM: