Holocaust Speaker Brings Story of Survival, Price of Hate
Nov. 14, 2019 -- Heights High’s Lessons of the Holocaust class is aptly named. The class is taught by Mark Sack and students aren’t just learning about the Holocaust. They are drawing life lessons from it, including grasping how the consequences of their actions affect others, how to respond with insight and empathy in their personal interactions, and how to be upstanders instead of bystanders when witnessing injustice of any sort.
Those lessons were brought home by a recent visit to the class from Holocaust survivor Roman Frayman. Mr. Frayman, now 81, told a remarkable story that began when German Nazis occupied his home in Poland he was four years old. Most children who were too young to work in labor camps were simply killed, as was the case with his one-year-old brother. But the little Roman managed to stay with his parents and was briefly hidden with them in a concentration camp before a sympathetic German soldier smuggled him out in a suitcase and delivered him to an old friend of his parents, a Catholic woman named Maria Balagowa.
And there the young Roman stayed, believing he too was Christian. This belief protected both him and Ms. Balagowa, who was putting her own life in danger to help another. What he learned only later was that his mother had escaped from the camp and had been hiding in the basement of the very same building where he lived, unwilling to confuse or endanger her son by visiting. Instead, she would sneak upstairs to watch him as he slept at night.
These personal sacrifices were another lesson for the students, as Mr. Frayman stressed the importance of doing what is right simply because it’s right. He declared his survival a miracle and warned that “apathy and indifference to injustice can have deadly consequences.”
Mr. Sack believes that hearing Mr. Frayman’s personal story will help his students understand the personal price of hate and encourage them to have a positive impact on their own communities.
Toward the end of the class, Mr. Frayman asked the class what they would say to someone who claims the Holocaust never happened. He was very satisfied to hear their answer: "I met a survivor and I studied the facts. I know it happened."