From Part 1: "Joseph Stalin once said, 'One death is a tragedy; one million is a statistic.' As important as it is to be educated about history in order to understand how the world works, I believe it is even more important to preserve the stories behind the statistics. Normally, when we learn about events like World War II, we learn the timeline of events, battles that occurred, or casualties and general information about the event as a whole. Very rarely in school do we learn the personal stories of survivors and people who experienced everything as it happened. But when we do get to hear the personal stories, it reminds us that World War II was not just a historical event, but a time in which people suffered, fought, and died, but were encouraged by courageous acts of heroism. We are reminded of the actual people involved and the tragedy of each death; one million may be too large of a number to comprehend, but we should at least dedicate time to learning the stories behind as many of those as we can."
Meeting so many veterans and hearing all of their stories of bravery and survival was an incredible blessing, and I feel so fortunate to have recorded the details of their time in combat. Along with the veterans, I also met a few Holocaust survivors. One of them, Elane Geller, was a woman who grew up in the Auschwitz concentration camp. First, before delving into her own story, she reminded us that Auschwitz was not a work camp. It produced only one thing: death. The ovens were lit 24/7.
Mrs. Geller, a Jewish girl in Poland at the time, was taken to the death camp at the age of four. Her family didn’t come easily; when the Nazis rounded them up, they resisted and fought to save their children, and the soldiers massacred her mother and grandparents right in front of her. Even at only four years old, she still remembers the blood as it flowed onto the street. When they arrived at the camp, her family was split apart, but she was able to remain with her aunt. She never saw either of her two brothers again. Her 16-year-old sister was killed in the camp at some point during the four years they were there. She stayed by her aunt’s side the entire time as she suffered from constant lice, typhoid, tuberculosis and typhus, eating toothpaste and drinking urine to survive. The German soldiers treated their dogs like humans, and the humans in the camps like dogs. They watched as their dogs attacked her on a daily basis for entertainment.
When asked, “What did you do all day?” she answered, “I stepped over dead bodies and focused on surviving. I grew up thinking that was normal.” After the four years there, her father, who had already escaped, found out where she was. Her aunt threw her over an electric barbed wire fence to her father, who then hid them in a coal truck, allowing them to escape. All of their family members who survived in the death camps, including her aunt, were eventually reunited after liberation.
Hearing the stories of WWII veterans and Holocaust survivors like Mrs. Geller and many others truly changed my perspective on life. As an impressionable young student, this class became so important to me as I learned about real heroes, these brave and admirable men and women. I now have a newfound respect for them and a broader perspective on life in general. What a blessing it was to have the opportunity to hear about so many inspiring lives. The ones I have shared so far, as well as many others, will stay with me for a long time. I can only hope that others will continue to keep these stories alive as well so that the millions of deaths will remain more than just a statistic.
