Holocaust Survivor Speaks at Jefferson Elementary School

On June 2, Jefferson School fifth graders, joined by same-aged students from Clinton School and  South Mountain School, met Holocaust survivor Marion Blumenthal Lazan, author of the children's book, Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story.

After filling the auditorium, students sat in wide-eyed attention as Lazan chronicled her experience as a four-year-old child, arriving at the  Westerbork refugee camp in Holland, to six years later, when she was ten years old, arriving at the German  concentration camp of Bergen-Belsen (where Anne Frank died).  In an understated tone, she described the factual history of Hitler's rise to power and how, along with her older brother Albert and their parents, she was swept up in the threatening veil of Nazism which left the family trapped in wartime Germany.

In 1939, Lazan's family was one of the first to move into Westerbork, where they had the luxury of "little houses," like an ordinary barracks where  they could live together as a family.  But by 1940, Germany had invaded Holland and life in the work camp became crowded and food scarce.

From her memoir, Lazan read, "Dutch Jews from all over Holland were rounded up by the thousands and brought in to be processed.  Some stayed only a few days; others remained for months.  None had any control over his or her fate."

Westerbork was turned into a transit camp as many Jews waited to be deported to the various death camps in Germany or eastern Europe.  Lazan's mother knew it was just a matter of time for them.

In her book, Lazan recalls her mother's words, "Even the very worst conditions at Westerbork were a heaven by comparison.  For Bergen-Belsen was hell.  The only way we managed to survive in those early months of 1944--cold, hungry, and completely degraded--was on hope."

Describing to the students her days at Bergen-Belsen, Lazan went through a checklist of everyday life: dysentery leading to dehydration, filth,  foul odor, lice and its spread of typhus.  She spoke of her survival technique, her belief that finding four pebbles of similar shape and size would give her the hope that all four members of her family would survive.

Lazan's message to the students was poignant as she explained that she was their  age during those years.  Many  of the students had purchased her book beforehand and autographed books were returned to them.  For this final generation of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust, these students will have seen and remembered.