December 24, 2004/Tevet 12 5765, Vol. 57, No. 17
Pride and perseverance
STEPHANIE N. HENSCHEL
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 Lola Lachman, a Holocaust survivor, talks to the eighth-grade class at Bogle Junior High School in Chandler on Dec. 6. Photo by Stephanie N. Henschel |
But Lola Lachman didn't seem to have any trouble.
Lachman, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, spoke to a class of eighth-graders at Bogle Junior High on Dec. 6.
Justin Green, a teacher at the school, heard about the program Lachman was with, "Heroes and the Holocaust," organized by World War II veteran Henry Harris, and invited the duo speak at the school.
Though talking about the horrors Lachman witnessed is not easy - "I will not sleep, it will keep going in my head" - she and Harris know the importance of telling the younger generation about the tragic event.
According to Harris, also a substitute teacher, many students today "know little and care less about our history and certainly about the precarious times of 1940 and 1941."
"Few know about the Holocaust and soon there will be no survivors left to tell them the truth as they experienced it," he said.
The students listened with rapt attention as Lachman detailed the miserable facts - Jews, Hispanics, blacks, the handicapped were all killed. "They (Nazis) thought it was fun," she cried.
Pictures of children not much older than those in the audience were passed around, depicting pits filled with corpses and victims used in medical experiments.
Lachman implored the students to tell anyone who said the Holocaust didn't happen that it did.
"Tell them you met a survivor," she said. "Tell them I told you it was true."
But it was the questions, asked by students, that really made all the difference. Some wanted to know if she had a tattoo, if she had personally ever come close to being killed, and, of course, if she had ever met Anne Frank - she was in the same camp, Bergen-Belsen, but they never met.
After the presentation, when the students filed out of the room, some stopped to talk with Lachman and take a closer look at some of the photos.
One girl told Lachman she could speak Polish. An excited Lachman began speaking to the girl in her native language.
Others thanked her for speaking to them and tried to shake her hand.
But there was no handshaking from the dynamic woman. Only hugs.
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