Generations Sharing the Holocaust Experience

Abstract

The author's feelings and experiences in sharing the Holocaust with her own children and the children she addresses regularly in schools are discussed in this paper. From her talks and exchanges with young people, it has been the author's experience that stories of how we lived, not perished, make the greatest impact on young and old listeners. Unless we know the people's lives and what the Jewish people, as well as society at large, lost through the deaths of countless brilliant, educated, compassionate people, as well as children whose futures will always remain unknown and unrealized, we cannot fully mourn their deaths. To really know what the world lost through the Nazi terror, we must share stories of family members and of people we knew and admired with those to whom Holocaust victims are becoming statistics and numbers, not individuals with vibrant lives and futures that were cut down.

Children particularly need to hear life stories of those who perished, not only the facts of how their lives ended. The author reports on sharing the Holocaust experience, not only with Jewish children, but with children of all religions, colors, ages and backgrounds-not only in person, but through correspondence, conference calls/ visits and classroom exchanges as a volunteer for the New York City School Volunteers Program in which she takes part.