Holocaust survivor speaks to Gate City students ahead of Holocaust Remembrance Day
GATE CITY, Va. (WJHL) – On Saturday, people around the world will participate in International Holocaust Remembrance Day. The remembrance takes place every year on the day Auschwitz-Birkenau was liberated.
In honor of this day, Gate City High School history teacher Stephanie Taylor organized a Google Meet Friday with a Holocaust survivor to tell her story to students.
“Last semester, I reached out to the Virginia Holocaust Museum in Richmond and actually had Erika Schwartz speak with my class last semester,” said Taylor. “And we enjoyed it a lot. So I thought because tomorrow is International Holocaust Remembrance Day, we could have the students speak with her again.”
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Schwartz was born on April 23, 1944, just one day before the Nyiregyhaza ghetto she lived in was sealed. Schwartz’s story comes from her mother since Schwartz was too young to remember it all. Schwartz and her mother were the sole survivors of her family following the Holocaust.
Schwartz told the students the story of her 19-year-old Aunt Olga, who sacrificed herself so that Schwartz and her mother could survive. Taylor said she hopes that by hearing the story, her students will see the important and selfless choice made by someone close to their age.
“It was just so important for them to see that this young woman who is about their age made the decision to not go into the apartment where Erika and her mother were,” Taylor said. “She made the decision to run to the roof and jump off the roof to keep the Nazis from finding her family.”
The students who attended the meeting each found something that stood out about Schwartz’s story.
“I also found interesting that they were able to keep many of the photos of her family to put in that PowerPoint,” said GCHS senior Ian Stapleton. “To show like even her great grandmother who they said died in Auschwitz the first day and just her grandmother and all the children and all the aunts, individual pictures.”
“I like that she didn’t completely make her whole life about everything bad,” said junior Keyarra Way. “She still had a life after everything bad that she went through.”
Senior Trevor Estepp has continued to learn about the Holocaust both in and out of class. After hearing Schwartz’s story, he was able to learn something new.
“I thought it was one it was one of those they kind of just rounded them up and took them because that’s the way it kind of gets explained,” said Estepp. “And the way she explained it, them being able to stay in their own home until they were shipped off, that was something I’d never heard of.”
Schwartz told the students about a quote that she references often.
“I may not have control over anything happening around me, but I have complete control over what happens between my two ears,” Schwartz told the students.
Estepp said that quote will continue to stick with him.
“I think that’s definitely something everybody should take home with them,” said Estepp.
Both Way and Stapleton said hearing Schwartz’s story reminds them to look at the good things in their own lives.
“No matter what you go through, there’s always a silver lining,” Stapleton said. “You just have to look for it.”
“Not let something bad happen and to rely on that to keep going no matter what,” said Way.
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