Rumson Holocaust Survivor Speaks To Holmdel Students

HOLMDEL, NJ — It was a special November morning in Holmdel today, when the entire eighth-grade class gathered in the high school auditorium to hear a Holocaust survivor speak. Claire Boren, 79, is one of the few remaining Holocaust survivors still living in the United States.

Boren, a Jewish woman, lives in Rumson now, but was born in Eastern Poland, now the Ukraine. When she was 4 years old her village was liquidated by the Nazis, her father was killed and she and her mother went into hiding for over a year.

"In the Holocaust, more than six million Jews were murdered. They say that only one out of eleven children survived. I'm one of those eleven," Boren began her lecture to students today. She is a petite woman who wore stylish glasses, dangly earrings and sneakers. "My mother and I were in hiding for a year and a half. But in my mind it felt like years."

The Holmdel students sat wordlessly as she talked.

"I was born in a small town in Poland called Mizocz, which was about 2,000 people. I lived in a two-family house with my mother and father. My aunt and uncle, cousins, and grandparents lived nearby," she said. "About 40 percent of us in town were Jewish and we lived together with no problems. And then of course, everything changed."

"People were coming back from other towns and talking about towns being liquidated and people being driven away. So my father decided to pay someone to put us into hiding. Then one day the man he paid came to our door and said you have to leave, and you have to leave right away. The next thing I remember is my mother and I walking in this field. I remember my father came and picked me up and said goodbye. That was the last time I ever saw him," she said. "The very next day, they liquidated the Jewish part of our town. So that man must have been tipped off they were going to do this. The German and Polish soldiers rounded everyone up. They took all the Jewish people and asked them to come into the town square. One by one, they killed 1,500 men, women and children that day."

Boren and her mother went to the home of the family that agreed to hide them. But that was short-lived: The family told her mother it was too dangerous, and they had to leave. Her mother, four-year-old daughter in tow, walked down the road and they were taken in by very poor Polish farmers.

"They were so poor but very religious, and they just knew it was the right thing to do. To this day I wish I could find them and thank them. But this began my time in what I call 'the hole.' They dug a hole under where they kept the pigs and it was just big enough for my mother to lie down and put me next to her. They put planks on top of it. I would lie down next to her and they put planks on top of us and the pigs would stand on top," she said. "We would lie there during the day and come out at night to eat and use the bathroom. At first my mother would tell me stories, fairy tales and stories about our family to pass the time. But then I started to lose track of night and day. I retreated into my fantasy world. My time in what I call 'the hole' was really horrifying. I can never quite recreate the horror of being in that hole. I started to lose touch with reality. The Polish farmers were superstitious people and they told my mother I was possessed and she should kill me. My mother decided that was not an option so we had to leave the farm then, too."

From there, the mother and daughter walked to a village. Boren said that because she was so young and because she didn't look Jewish, she blended in with the other Polish children. She remembers playing with them. But her mother was not safe.

"We heard there were Jews hiding in the woods so we joined them. We ate berries and mushrooms and slept out in the open. I remember one night it rained so hard I rolled down a muddy hill and woke up at the bottom of the hill in the morning," she said. "But I slept through this entire rainstorm, and didn't even know it. I was so hungry all the time in the woods."

The regular German army did not come into the woods; it was too dangerous. But the local population did occasionally venture in to round up Jews and bring them to the Nazis, she said. There was a raid on her encampment and a number of people were killed, she said, including a young girl of about 12 who was raped and killed. Boren said she still has a picture of the girl and showed it to the students; the girl had a big bow in her hair. Her mother was tipped off that a raid was coming and once again, mother and daughter fled.

"We walked back to our town because my father had buried some jewels and family heirlooms in our backyard. I remember my mother left me in a shed under lots of blankets and went back to our yard to dig. I remember so vividly being in that shed and thinking, 'If my mother doesn't come back, what should I do then? What's my plan?' Can you imagine a 5-year-old having these kinds of thoughts?"

Shortly after that, their town was invaded by the Russians. Boden said she remembers the fighting between the Nazis and the Russian forces and that it sounded like constant fireworks. She and her mother were finally safe from the Nazis. But life remained difficult. It was the spring of 1944; World War II was still continuing, and she and her mother lived in Russian-occupied Poland. She went to a Russian school and had to learn Russian.

"Under the Russians everything was a competition. So myself and another Jewish boy in the school won the prize that year for being 'Stalin's best student.' As you can imagine life was not good for us after that. This other boy and I had to run home every day because the other students would torture us."

From there she and her mother went to a camp for displaced persons, run by the U.S. Her mother remarried a man she met in the camp, and Boren's sister was born in the camp. Boren said she really wanted to go to Israel, then called Palestine, as many Jews in the camp were doing. But her mother had a cousin in America. The family emigrated to the United States. Boren went to high school and college here, and eventually married a Jewish man who had been held in Auschwitz. They have two children.

At the end of her lecture, Boren said the students could ask her anything they wanted. One girl asked what happened to her father.

"He was betrayed." She suddenly stopped talking. She had warned the students she wouldn't talk about things that were too difficult. Then she asked them a question.

"Why do you think I came here to this school today? I can't be easy for me, to talk about all this."

"To not feel sad anymore," one student replied. "To help us remember," said another.

"Yes, I came here for those reasons," she answered. "But I also came here today for another reason: When I came to the U.S. I thought I was coming to a golden land. I thought everything was going to be perfect. But I remember I was in high school and I was on the subway in New York City. And I saw written in these big black letters on white subway tile the words, 'Kill all the Jews.' And I was so shocked to see that, here in America. And when I see Neo-Nazis marching, I thought it was something I would never, ever see in this country. So I want all of you to stand up to racism when you see it, and stand up to bullying, too."

Boren is a past-president of the Jewish Federation of Monmouth County. She regularly speaks in public about her childhood experiences. She was brought to Holmdel today by English teacher Marissa Crimoli, who teaches about the Holocaust as part of the eighth grade English curriculum. Crimoli, who has her master's degree in Holocaust and genocide studies, met Boren through her work with The Center for Holocaust, Human Rights & Genocide Education (Chhange) on the Brookdale Community College campus. Boren is an artist and often paints about her experiences in hiding. Her work has been displayed on the Brookdale campus, as well as at other Holocaust exhibits nationally and internationally.

"I encouraged the students beforehand to ask her as many questions as they can think of, because who knows when they'll get to meet and talk to someone like this again," said Crimoli.

All photos and reporting done by Carly Baldwin/Patch