Holocaust Survivor Speaks to Troy Students

Submitted by Troy School District 30-C

Troy Middle School English Language Arts teachers recently sponsored Holocaust survivor Magda Brown for an assembly presentation to the school’s eighth-grade classes. Brown brought real-life perspective to the students, who had been studying the Holocaust in their ELA and social studies classes throughout the trimester.

Brown described the Holocaust as “a pre-meditated, scientifically-coordinated mass murder.”

Her life growing up, however, was not much different than that of her eighth-grade audience. Brown told of her normal, safe and enjoyable childhood growing up in Hungary.

“I was just as much a happy-go-lucky eighth-grader as you,” she told the Troy students.

Her placid life quickly turned upside-down when her family’s home of six was turned into a Jewish ghetto residence of 40 people. They were robbed of all their material goods by thugs, as the police looked the other way, and then they were robbed ‘legally,’ the money from their possessions and accounts being used to pay the costs to transport them to Nazi concentration camps.

Brown described the horrid conditions in the boxcars and the lies told to them to keep them from fighting or trying to escape. And then there was the Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp, where her family was killed in the gas chambers. She and her brother were the only ones to survive. She was eventually freed by American soldiers from a bomb-making concentration camp in Germany.

“You are the future generation,” she told the students. “Your job is to protect our freedom.”

“It was a lot different than I thought,” TMS eighth-grader Ian Berk said of Brown’s presentation.

Ian said to hear actual in-person details of how Brown and her family were affected by the genocide was very interesting.

“I really appreciate her coming to speak with us students,” TMS eighth-grader Chelsea Cotton added.

Chelsea said what struck her the most about Brown’s presentation was hearing about everything that was taken away from her in such a short amount of time.

“She was robbed of all her materialistic things,” Chelsea said, “and of all of her family and friends. She was forced to grow up fast.”

ELA teacher Shari Pagel said the students had been participating in a Holocaust literature circle with literature from the period that included, “The Boy in the Striped Pajamas,” by John Boyne; “I Have Lived a Thousand Years: Growing up in the Holocaust,” by Livia Bitton-Jackson; and “Prisoner B-3087,” by Alan Gratz.

Social studies teacher Matt Stortz said students had also learned about the history of the Holocaust.

“We covered everything from the rise of Hitler and the Nazi party all the way up to the ‘final solution’ and the genocide of the Jewish population in Europe,” Stortz said.

Magda Brown is a member of the Speakers’ Bureau of the Illinois Holocaust Museum and Education Center in Skokie.

“Democratic institutions and values are not automatically sustained, but need to be appreciated, nurtured, and protected,” the museum’s website states.