By MARK DOMEIER
Contributing writer
The 8th graders at NRHEG read the play version of The Diary of Anne Frank every year for instructors Nancy Rudau and Mark Domeier. After learning about the Holocaust and events that happened with the Frank family and the others who hid with them, many students search for other books to read about that tragic time. Many also take the Holocaust class offered to upperclassmen at NRHEG.
But on February 21, this year's 8th graders had a unique experience. They got a chance to listen to and interact with a survivor of the Holocaust, Gidon Lev. Born in Karlsbad, Czechoslovakia, in 1935, Lev was three when Adolph Hitler annexed that part of his country into Germany. His family moved to Prague, but the Nazis soon followed. At the age of 6, Lev and his family were taken to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt and were there until he was 10. Twenty-six members of his family, including his father, were murdered during the Holocaust.
Lev and his mother moved to the United States and then Canada after the war before Lev finally settled in Israel in 1959. It was from there that he joined the NRHEG students via Zoom, aided by his assistant and biographer, Julie Gray. Lev is also a TikTok sensation, with millions of views on his videos about Holocaust education.
The students were entranced as Lev talked for an hour about his life and experiences. He shared pictures and showed maps to enlighten the kids about his life. A story about watching his great-grandmother get on a train headed to a known death camp was particularly gripping.
Caralee Koopal and Shayna Kress had also prepared some questions for him. Koopal first asked how he coped with the aftermath of the Holocaust. Lev responded by saying he just had to take a positive attitude and go on with life. It wasn't always easy, but his mother and other surviving relatives helped with that. Koopal also asked why he chose to speak about those events to people worldwide. Lev said he wanted to educate everyone so something like that would never happen again.
Kress followed up by asking if he saw Nazis who maybe tried to help the Jewish prisoners. Lev commented that he never saw that, though he knows of stories of that happening. She also asked how he felt about Germans today. Lev thought a moment before saying that the German people today are a different generation and not the same as those in the 1940s. He just hopes they understand their country's history and learn from the tragic mistakes made by Hitler and the Nazis.
Lev told the students that he was looking forward to celebrating his 88th birthday at the beginning of March and was open to visiting via the internet in the future. Students were buzzing as they left the classroom and during the day, knowing they had just experienced a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity. According to an April 2022 report, there were about 161,000 Holocaust survivors living in Israel and around 50,000 in the United States.