-...recorded for you teachers out there.
If you want to show this
to multiple sections of your classroom,
you know, of your class, you know, in the coming days,
you will have this available to you,
and I will e-mail you after about how you do that
and how you watch the recordings.
So that'll come after the webinar,
and for those of you that are stuck snowed in,
you're in luck with that, too.
So I'm going to transition into a different room now.
You're going to see the room just change a little bit,
and I'm going to tell you what we're going to do today.
All right. So, come on. There we go.
So you don't see me yet.
I'll put that up in a second,
but what we're going to spend time on,
just for the first 5 minutes,
is we are going to actually
do just a quick overview of the Holocaust.
Now, this program is not that.
It's not an overview.
We're going to spend as much time as possible
talking with Luna today and asking her questions.
But just so everybody kind of gets on the same page,
we're going to spend 5 minutes on that,
and then we're going to turn it over to Luna
And I'm going to be asking you --
or asking her -- excuse me -- some of your awesome questions,
some that were already sent in
and some that you guys can type in live.
So what you see kind of on the left-hand side
of this webinar area,
this webinar room, is what we call a Q&A pod.
You can see you can type in that Q&A pod,
and I will be looking at it throughout the program
And if you want to ask Luna a question,
we'll be taking some questions from that pod today.
Now, we have a lot of people watching with us,
so we won't be able
to even scratch the surface of the amount
that you're going to be asking, I'm sure,
but we will try our best to answer,
you know, your questions today.
So, as I said, we're going to start off
with a quick overview of the Holocaust,
and so I need to ask you guys a couple questions
to see if you're up to snuff on your history.
So I've got a poll question I'm bringing in here first,
and if you guys haven't done this before,
you're going to see it come up onscreen.
And I'm opening up a poll.
My question for you guys,
just to see that we're all on the same page, is,
how long ago did the Holocaust take place?
So, A, 20 years ago, in the 1990s,
B, 40 years ago, 1970s,
C, 70 years ago, which is the 1940s or so,
or D, 100 years ago, 1910s, 19-teens.
All right. I'm going to wait for you guys to respond,
and it looks like you all know what time in history
we're talking about.
Very good. All right.
So, we're going to publish the results.
So you guys can see almost 60% of you guys
know that this was now 70 years ago.
Very, very good.
All right. So let's --
In addition to that, as I said,
we're just going to do the quickest of overviews
and talk about what the Holocaust is
in less than 5 minutes.
And, of course, you're going to be spending
lots and lots of time on this in your classroom
if you haven't already, but this is just so that
we are all on the same page together today.
So, okay, what is the Holocaust?
Now, a definition you might find in your textbooks
is something kind of like this --
"The Holocaust was the systematic, bureaucratic
state-sponsored persecution
and murder of approximately 6 million Jewish people
by the Nazi regime before and during World War II.
Also, you guys might talk about in your class, as well,
that there were close to up to 5 million non-Jewish people
who were also killed by the Nazis during the Holocaust,
and you can see that coming up onscreen right now.
And another thing of course you might talk about
with World War II in general is Nazi Germany,
and with the rise of the Nazi party,
with the rise of Hitler,
anti-Semitism, discrimination, and violence
became a government policy.
And as I said, I know I'm just briefly
touching on these things,
but you guys will talk about this
plenty, plenty, plenty in class.
And soon certain policies and certain restrictions
against Jewish people,
you know, appeared in Nazi Germany
and eventually Nazi-occupied countries.
You all will talk about the Nuremberg laws,
restrictions against Jewish people in many aspects of life.
You'll also talk about Kristallnacht,
the night of broken glass,
violent riots against Jewish businesses and synagogues.
Those are some things that you'll touch on.
You'll also eventually touch on escalating into ghettos
and completely separating,
isolating Jewish people in cities and towns
across Nazi-occupied Europe.
So, this complete separation, control, and confinement.
And then eventually, though, these ghettos were liquidated.
People were moved out of these ghettos to eventually --
Many, many, many went to what we call
either a concentration camp or an extermination camp.
You've maybe heard "death camp" or "killing center."
Luna is going to tell you about the concentration camps today
that she went to.
But, you know, we kind of define these
in a different way from each other.
Concentration camps are usually camps
where victims were imprisoned without a trial,
and as the war went on, these camps, of course,
incorporated forced labor.
And then a death camp specifically were camps
where victims were killed on this large scale.
But eventually --
and kind of actually related to why we're talking today --
these camps, as the Allies --
the United States, the British, the Russians --
as they came in to Nazi-occupied territory,
they came across many of these concentration camps
and death camps
and were shocked by what they found
and also finding many, many dead,
but also living survivors.
And actually today, everyone -- the reason we're talking --
today is the 70th anniversary of the liberation of Auschwitz.
And today is also, because of that anniversary,
International Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Now, I'm going to bring up a quote onscreen,
and this is actually how we're going to close out
the webinar today, but throughout this program,
I want you to be thinking about this quote
from Martin Niemoller.
He was a religious person, as you can tell,
but he was part of this Confessional Church
that protested against what the Nazis were doing,
but as you can see here, he never really spoke out,
he said, for the victims, especially Jewish people.
And later, after the war, he said this, onscreen.
"In Germany, they came first for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up because I was not a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I did not speak up because I was not a Jew.
Then they came for the trade unionists.
I didn't speak up because I wasn't a trade unionist.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me, and by that time,
there was no one left to speak up."
Now, this is a really powerful quote
that I'm going to ask you about
a little bit later in the program,
so just keep thinking about that.
But I think it's an important message for today,
also of course, you know, in history,
but an important message today that I think Luna is going to be
touching on a lot during this program.
So what I'm going to do now, though, is hide this.
I know. Wasn't that the quickest overview probably ever?
But you guys want to talk to Luna.
I know that's what we want to do here.
So I'm going to start my webcam.
And all right, Luna, let's see if we're both onscreen here.
All right. There we go.
All right. So, you all see us now.
So, everyone in the digital world, this is Luna Kaufman.
She is our wonderful guest star today,
and we're so glad that she's here today with us
and talking with us here at the museum,
actually not just once but twice today, which is pretty crazy.
And I'll give you details if you want to watch her
again later this evening.
But right now Luna will be talking to us today.
We're so glad you're with us.
Thank you so much for being here.
-My pleasure.
-And, you know, we have a lot of questions
for you today, as you know.
I sent Luna over 100 student questions
before this program even started.
So, thank you, everyone.
And so we're going to be starting
with some of those questions today,
but I hope you put some more in that Q&A pod there.
But, Luna, can you first tell us where you're from?
Tell us a little bit about your family,
about your childhood, you know, that sort of thing.
-I was born in Krakow, Poland,
of a family that traces its roots back to 1700.
And I don't know beyond that
because our family history only goes to 1700s.
I was born in a house as a fourth generation
in the same house, the same place,
and that's where I lived until the Nazis chased us out.
We had a middle-class family.
We were quite comfortable,
and we were one of the assimilated families,
which means that we lived a life together
with our Polish neighbors and participated
in any of the Polish endeavors.
As a matter of fact, my 94-year-old grandfather,
who was killed at that time by the Germans
because he refused to kneel in front of them,
was a messenger in an uprising,
Polish uprising in the 1800s.
And the family goes back as big activists in Poland,
and we had a lot of Polish friends and Jewish friends.
I attended school
where I was one of three Jewish children.
Otherwise, the school was a Catholic school
because all the state schools
were run as Catholic schools with the church supervising it,
and I personally did not suffer any discrimination in school.
As a matter of fact, for the most part --
I was the president of the class,
and nobody made an issue.
When I was a little girl,
about I think 8 years old,
one of my -- or 7 years old,
one of my Christian friends,
another girl, called me a dirty Jew.
And I knocked out her two front teeth for that.
And the principal of the school punished her rather than me.
So, this whole image that there was a tremendous difference
between the Poles and the Jews --
It's true, while there was still a lot of anti-Semitism
and other problems,
there were some people who were much more progressive
and much more integrated than the others
because the very religious obviously stayed
within their own circles.
But we were not that religious.
We were also much more integrated
with the rest of the society.
I was 12 when the war broke out.
So, as you can figure out very fast, I'm now 88.
And I really feel that we do need to work together
and we do need to talk to each other
and learn about each other.
I think that a lot of the problems
are stemming from the ignorance.
The Jews don't know about the Christian,
the Christians don't know about the Muslims,
and nobody knows and nobody wants to hear
about anybody else.
So, I think it's very important
that we open our eyes and ears
and we reach out to others
in order to create a better world than existed
because it was just horrible what was in existence.
-And that's why, you know, a lot of times,
students ask me personally, you know,
"Why are we talking about this? Why are we studying this?
We talk about it a lot in school.
How does this matter to me?"
And I think that sums it up right there.
And I think that's, you know,
what we're going to kind of hit home hopefully
with everybody, you know, throughout the program.
A lot of students were wondering, you know,
how your life changed when the Nazis invaded
and how quickly, you know, things started to happen,
you know, in Poland after 1939.
-That's very interesting
because, really, when the war broke out,
we were of the set of mind
that Germany was the most liberal country,
most accepting country.
As a matter of fact, when the anti-Semitism was raging
in all the other countries,
the Jews were getting the best education in Germany,
and somehow, nobody believed that a country
which was considered a cultural summit of Europe
would behave in this manner.
Nobody believed that they are,
you know, too encompassing
and too reaching out and then they would turn.
And nobody wanted to believe it.
So while the --
In the '30s, early '30s,
when the Nazis started in Germany,
we were still attuned to the fact
that this is something temporary
and this is something that isn't going to develop into anything.
Even so, the shipments of Jews escaping from Germany
were coming to Poland,
and my mother was serving on a committee in housing
and feeding the people,
still did not think that this is a possibility.
And everybody says, "Oh, why didn't you run away?"
-Yeah, that's another question I got, too, yeah.
-When you think about it, run away where?
Anti-Semitism was raging all over Europe, everywhere,
and also people did not travel
and they did not resettle as easily.
Don't forget when --
We were a family going back to 1700.
Our whole family, a very large one, lived in Poland.
So, how do you separate yourself and leave everybody behind
and just take off?
You still want to hold on to the rest of the family,
to the rest of the roots,
and everything else was completely foreign to us.
But while it was foreign,
my father was always aware of the fact
that you have to have some kind of a profession
that is in your hands, that you don't need the language
in case you will need to move
because he was a war prisoner.
He was an Austrian officer
and was a war prisoner in first war in Russia.
And because he was very handy --
He did speak Russian also,
but still, because he was handy,
he was able to start by repairing umbrellas
and then switched to embroidering the vestments
for church and making nice money and being able to live --
because prisoners didn't live in prison camps
the way they did in the second war.
I don't exactly know how they were living,
how they were accommodated,
but they really needed to make their own money
in order to be able to survive.
So, as a result, he enrolled us in high school,
which we called gymnasium,
where we were getting
all preparatory courses for university,
but also we were learning style.
And he was planning that, when we finished high school,
we would go to Paris to study couturier and styling
in order to have something in our hands.
And that one year of working in that school
and learning something about sewing
came extremely handy in the camps
because, while we were incarcerated,
we all had only one set of clothing.
And the clothing would tear.
And if somebody had an extra blouse or what --
And I was able, obviously by hand-sewing
because we didn't have any sewing machines,
to do the work and earn, like, a little --
another slice of bread for doing a repair,
which meant a lot when you're getting one slice a day --
one slice of bread a day.
To be able to get another slice of bread
was quite an achievement.
-Yeah. Yeah.
Now, actually, we have a question on our computer here
from North Platte High School,
and I think this kind of relates to,
you know, when we're talking.
They're asking, was your hometown, you know --
Was Krakow broken up? Was there a ghetto?
And did you --
Were you taken away there to the ghetto
at some point in Krakow?"
-Now, you know, the Nazis were very, very clever.
They never did anything drastically instantly.
They would do things in a very progressive way,
in a very fast speed,
but still it was very gradual.
They would take us --
First of all, they closed all the banks
and all the schools.
So we had no access to our money
because before the war, nobody kept money at home.
Some people kept gold and kept diamonds and valuable things,
and they did keep at home with the thought that,
"If need be, we will sell it, and we'll have something."
As a matter of fact, my mother sewed --
in the border of our coats, she sewed in some jewelry.
In case we are separated,
we should be able to pull it out and sell it,
and gold was at such a tremendous price
that later on during the war,
she would have her gold crowns removed and sold it for gold
because that would provide us with quite a few days of food.
You know, it was amazing, the value of things.
-Mm-hmm. Yeah. Yeah.
-So then Krakow, as such, was never, ever attacked
and never suffered any damage.
Not a stone was turned for centuries,
and everybody believed, because it was kind of a nest
of the most religious Christian people, Catholics,
and they always felt that it was protected by God.
When go through Krakow, on one street,
you can hit five, six churches
from every century since 13th century on,
of every architecture that you can dream of
during the centuries.
And they always believed that this is what protecting Krakow.
-And then what happened after --
-And then what happened was
that at first they started
by saying that our apartments were too big
and they were taking away our belongings.
And one day, they came to our house,
and by then, we were living two families in our apartment
because my aunt, who'd had two sons and a husband,
came over from the western Poland.
And they were coming to take our belongings, our furniture,
because they were furnishing apartments for the SS people,
for the Nazis.
And we had a very big grand piano.
So, the man, the German, the Nazi, turned around.
and says, "Who plays the piano?"
And we pointed to my cousin who was --
We all played the piano, but he was the best pianist among us.
He was the oldest, and he played and sang for them.
At that point, they turned around, and they said,
"No, he plays too well.
We're not going to take it away."
-Wow. Wow.
-But that was a very, very rare occurrence.
But that was --
But it was not a long after the war started, not even a year,
where they said that,
"All the Jews have to leave the city."
And we have to live and go to the suburbs.
When you think about suburbs here,
it's a very desirable place,
but when you talk about suburbs in Poland,
they were just villages because as far as the streetcar went,
there was still a city.
Where the streetcar ended, nobody --
There were very few cars,
and people didn't have cars like they do today.
So, these suburbs, so called, were just villages
with outhouses and outside water wells,
you know, completely primitive life,
and we had to move out there,
which made it very, very difficult for us
because the houses over there or the apartments were very tiny.
And the people were assigned, a Jewish family, into one room,
a whole family,
and the other people only had two rooms to their name.
So, one of the rooms was taken,
so we were not really received very well.
And also, the family was spread all around a city
into different places,
and the transportation was forbidden.
We could not take a streetcar.
Obviously there were no cars.
So we kind of lost track of each other,
and it was very difficult to live like that
because we were completely,
you know, unable to make a living.
What I did, because I was always very handy,
I learned how to do beadwork,
and I would make necklaces and pins
and decoration for dresses,
and that's how I was helping the family.
I also did knitting,
where people would have two old sweaters
that were falling apart,
and I would combine it into a design of two different colors.
And so, you know, you resorted to everything possible,
and that kept you busy, which was very good, too.
-I want to give a school a shout-out,
but I'm trying to find it in all the questions,
but I think someone was asking --
And you've touched on it a little bit.
I think this was from the Sierra Vista, Arizona, school,
Mrs. Reddix's class.
But I think they were wondering what life was like
kind of in the ghetto?
Was there employment?
Was there enough food, enough water?
You know, when they learn,
especially about, you know, ghettos in Poland,
you know, and the conditions, was it difficult?
-It was very, very difficult.
However, when the ghetto was created
we almost look forward to go there
because what happened was we were together
and would know what's going on in the world
because the radios were completely forbidden.
There were no newspapers.
Television didn't exist yet.
Television was developed many, many years later in the States,
but we didn't even know that something like that was coming.
-Yeah.
-So, we were living in complete isolation
because we had no phones, no newspapers, no radio,
and no personal communication because we were so separated.
So, we looked forward to going to ghetto.
However, when we got into ghetto,
we were assigned in a two-room apartment.
There was one family that was already living over there,
of four people.
Then we were -- Another four people assigned
to this two-room apartment.
And then there was another woman with two daughters
that was also assigned.
And we all had to live in those quarters.
But, you know, you adjusted to it.
But at first we didn't have any employment.
We kind of lived with whatever we could scrounge,
and we had a Christian neighbor where we left our belongings
because we couldn't take anything with us,
as you can imagine.
And she would go on the streetcar
because the streetcar went through the ghetto streets.
She would sell some of our possessions
and throw to us the money passing through the ghettos
so we would have money to buy a piece of bread or something.
But she was several times caught and beaten,
and it didn't stop her from coming.
-Wow. That's amazing.
-And this was a tremendous help to us.
-Yeah. Yeah.
-And the conditions were...
-Ooh, uh-oh. -...very difficult.
Oh, yeah. My computer went to sleep, but it's still live.
There we go. Thank you.
-So, we kind of work on the idea of going to ghetto,
and everybody had to be assigned to work.
I personally liked going to be assigned in the winter
to shoveling snow off the street
because there were no snow plows, no cars, nothing.
It was all done by hand, and I thought, you know,
that was my good opportunity
to spend the day outdoors, you know?
-Yeah. -People considered
this to be very big humiliation.
I considered this a privilege... -Yeah, get some fresh air.
-...to be able to be in the fresh air
and sometimes the sunshine.
And you froze to death, but that's all right, you know?
When you're young, it doesn't matter.
-But then later on, we had to start getting jobs
because the gossip came through the ghetto
that if you would not have a job,
they will take you for the extermination camps.
And I got an assignment for a job in a brush factory,
and I always felt somehow
I had a drive to do everything perfect
because it gave me the satisfaction
and gave me the self-image that I am still worth something.
-Mm-hmm. -It was not, you know,
a collaboration with the Germans or anything,
but making brushes anyhow wouldn't be collaboration.
And one day, I decided that I'm going to get an assignment
for my mother for work.
I cannot quite figure out why I went.
We had, like, called the Arbeitsamt,
the employment office.
I went apply for her job.
I have no clue why she didn't go by herself.
-Yeah.
-So, I come in, and the woman who was receiving me said,
"Yes, I'll --" She was a German woman.
She says, "I'll assign you a job
if you knit a back to a sweater
I'm making for my fiancé.
It's his birthday, and I need it in 24 hours."
So, I said, "All right. Sure."
You never said no.
-Yeah. -And she --
I knitted the sweater.
I knitted it much smaller, put it in to water,
stretched it twice the size and brought it the next morning,
and she gave me an assignment for my mother
to the brush factory.
And that's what saved her life...
-Wow. -...because then later on,
not a long time after that,
they were liquidating the ghetto
and taking the people to the first camp,
which was Plaszów concentration camp.
That's the camp that was portrayed in "Schindler's List."
And she was able to enter the camp.
It sounds ridiculous when you think
that this was an award to be able to enter the camp,
but if you didn't enter the camp,
you were putting on a shooting range.
So, there was no choice.
And that's what saved her life at that time.
-Mm-hmm. We had --
This kind of relates to what you were saying,
but we had a question.
This is from Brookwood School in Thomasville, Georgia.
I don't know if you guys are with us right now,
but kind of like you said, you had an awareness
that these concentration camps and death camps existed.
They said, "In numerous accounts we have read,
survivors have stated they had no knowledge
of concentration camps."
So, did you when you were in the ghetto?
-We pretty much knew that they existed,
but we were not aware exactly what was happening in them.
And by the time we were in the ghetto,
we were quite aware that there were concentration camps,
and we were aware that the ghetto
is not going to last forever.
But, you know, don't forget, I was quite a little girl.
When you think about 13, 14 years old --
a lot of the things that the adults knew,
I didn't know about because they were trying to protect me, so...
-Yeah. And speaking about actually being a teenager --
I don't know -- this question made me smile.
This is from, I think, Ms. Maider's class.
They want to know, did you have, like,
a boyfriend or a significant other
or, you know, friends that you grew up with that you --
-I was -- No, but I was 12 when the war ended,
and I went to an all-girls school,
but in the ghetto, I had a lot of friends.
And I usually had always male friends.
But this strange happened, talking about friends,
that I had befriended one boy
who was working with me in the brush factory,
and he was supplied with the parts
that I needed to work with.
And he was always very good to me
and making sure that I got my supply
because back then we were paid like a penny a piece.
After a day's work, if I had enough money
to buy a loaf of bread it was a lot.
But the alternative wasn't so good,
so even that meant something.
And then after the war, we lost track of each other.
He always considered himself to be my boyfriend,
and for 40 years, we were looking for each other,
not knowing what happened.
And then somebody from my temple was in Philippines
and sat with a man from Australia,
and he was telling them his life story and said,
"You know, I had this girl, and I'm looking for her."
-Oh, no way. -That's 40 years after the war.
"Looking for her all over," and the woman said,
"Oh, we have a woman from Kraków in our temple."
And, you know, he looked at her as if, you know,
"This one woman -- how could it be?"
-Yeah, right. -So he started asking,
"Did she have blue eyes? Did she have a mother?"
And she said, "Yes.
So, he wrote the letter to me
for her to deliver to see whether it's me.
And then we found out each other,
so he decided to send his son from Australia to New York
to make sure that I turn out to be decent,
that he was not going to be disappointed.
-[ Laughing ] No!
-And we maintained complete communication with him.
I still am in touch with his wife.
He passed away already,
but we found each other 40 years later,
and we decided that every other year
we'll meet either in Europe
or they will come to America or to Australia.
-Mm-hmm. Wow.
-There was always something going on.
-Yeah.
Well, that's a great story because I know a few students
asked, like, "Did you keep in touch with anyone?"
and that's an amazing story, yeah, right there.
-Oh, yeah, I keep in touch with everybody.
I have friends that were born across the street from me.
-Yeah, that's -- Wow, that's wild.
So after, you know, living in the ghetto
for I'm not sure how long, when did --
You know, you said your mom went to the concentration camp.
Did you go with her, or did your...
-We went together. -...family split up?
How did that happen? -Yes.
What happened was that they took my father and my sister,
and they were sent to a concentrat-- to a --
They were building some barracks.
I don't exactly know.
It was called [speaking German]
"building of barracks,"
but I don't know exactly because I never saw them again
once they took them out of the ghetto.
And I stayed with my mother in the ghetto,
and then they liquidated the ghetto.
And when they were liquidating the ghetto, they took us --
We were supposed to pack, each one, one valise
and throw it out of the window into the courtyard,
mark our name,
and then we were marching from the ghetto
to the [speaking indistinctly]
-How far was it from -- -Probably about 2, 3 miles.
-Oh, okay.
-You know, I'm very bad at estimating things like that.
But what happened was that you have to have your papers,
and in the papers there has to be a statement
which said that you have a job.
Without a job, you could not get into the camp.
And we were walking.
We were halfway down the road.
And all of a sudden my mother looks into her pocketbook,
and her passport, her working papers, are gone.
-Oh, my gosh. -And we didn't know --
We knew this was certain death,
and we didn't know what to do about it,
so we started kind of staying back in order
for the people to go through, hoping for a miracle,
and all of a sudden we hear somebody yelling,
"Mrs. Fuss, Mrs. Fuss."
That was my maiden name.
It was a friend of mine
who found her pocketbook on the ground
and, being very nosy, looked in and saw her papers
and decided that she would try to find her because she knew
that this was a death sentence.
And this girl lives now 2 blocks away from me in New York.
-What?! Oh, that's crazy.
-And the funniest thing is, she didn't remember she did it.
-Oh, my gosh.
And, yeah, you know, the smallest act,
what she maybe thought was insignificant in some way
saved your mom, you know?
-She knew it was significant... -Yeah.
-...'cause she knew without this piece of paper,
she couldn't get into the camp. -Mm-hmm.
Wow. Well, we --
So, going into the camp, I think --
Let's see here. Sorry.
I'm getting a lot of questions now.
This looks like Schulz Home School.
They were asking --
So, you were saying you had to have a job?
You had to have a specific paper.
So, what kind of jobs did you do, you know,
in these camps generally?"
-At first, I was --
In Prussia, I was working at the brush factory.
As a matter of fact, I became so good
that when the commandant of the camp
needed brushes for his horses,
they asked me to do it.
And when I did it,
they asked me to go to his house to deliver it.
-Mm-hmm. -And I went to deliver it.
And the cook, knowing that we are starving,
gave me a package of raw meat,
and I thought that was a great prize,
so I stuck it, you know, into my dress.
I had a dress with fitted waist, so I stuck it on my stomach,
and I was going home.
And all of a sudden he has the dogs, the Great Danes.
-Oh, God. -And the Great Dane
walked into the kitchen.
I thought I will die because I feel
with the raw meat on me he would --
But somehow he must have had better tidbits
because he let me go,
and I went to the barracks with the piece of raw meat.
-Oh, my gosh.
-I almost died, knowing what was happening.
-Wow. Wow. That's crazy.
-And then from there,
they transported us to Skarzysko,
which was an ammunition factory.
As a matter of fact, there is a book written about it
called "Death Comes in Yellow."
It was about an ammunition factory where it's documented
that the owners of the factory
paid for each one of us certain amount of money
in order to have the workers
to work for them for nothing, obviously.
And the conditions were atrocious.
There was no food,
and the quota that we had to produce was unbelievable.
And also, one part of the factory
produced underwater mines
that were made from picric acid.
That's the best translation that I know of.
It was something very poisonous that turned your skin orange
and your hair very orange.
And you work there only for a very short time.
Two months was the maximum,
and your lungs would be attacked.
And, you know, you develop bleeding of the lungs.
So, at first, I was working in a much safer place,
and then they assigned me over there.
And I didn't get sick.
And after 2 months, obviously,
they took me into the infirmary
which normally would have meant the end of it.
but it was toward the end
as the Russian forces were entering Eastern Poland.
And somebody who was the biggest henchman in the camp
saved my life.
For some reason, they always called me
"de Kleiner," the little one, because I was --
At that time, I was about 14 years old,
and I was always quite short,
so I looked even much younger than my age.
And as they were coming to take everybody
because they would not take anybody sick to Germany
because they were preparing to transport us to Germany,
he took me in my nightgown, threw me through the backdoor,
and said, "Run away."
And I did run away.
And they did ship us from that factory then
to Leipzig to the same HASAG factory.
The same people owned it,
and we were the best working force
because, first of all, our quota of production
was something --
five times what the people
who were working there before had.
And they would work in two-hour slips
and would get milk in order to protect the lungs.
We got 10 hours straight and no food.
-Yeah. -So, that was --
They didn't have to house us.
They didn't have to dress us.
They didn't have to feed us.
So that was a great workforce.
And once we got to Germany
we were sent to work with the metal works.
So, that was already, you know, contamination.
And we were very lucky
because when we arrived there,
they took all our clothes away -- not all our clothes.
-We only had one change of clothing,
but the private clothes.
And I was issued the prison dress.
-Oh, yeah, let's show this
because I know there were some students
that asked if you kept anything.
Oh, bring it over that way. There you go.
-This prison dress,
and you see there is a number here...
-Let's see, on this side. -...on this side.
-Yeah, there we go. -There is a number here
that I embroidered because I wanted to make sure --
because we were called by numbers.
And when we came across the assessment,
they didn't ask our name.
We had to tell them our number,
and I wanted to make sure that this was neat.
I always felt if I kept neat, if I kept my hair combed,
it kind of would keep me alive
because otherwise, you know, what would you --
You know, once you let yourself go, it was all over.
-Yeah. Yeah. -So I wanted to --
I got a piece of a scrap
from the machines
and made the belt of it,
and I embroidered the number,
and I felt that I'm looking decent...
-Mm-hmm.
-...because that gave us
some kind of a human dimension.
-Mm-hmm.
-We weren't treated like humans,
so we were fighting to feel like humans.
-Now, there -- I think in every student question --
you know, every class that e-mailed us with questions --
And actually I know we've got a few from Haynes Academy.
Shout-out to you guys in New Orleans.
You were talking about, you know,
dressing nice was, like, kind of --
you know, as nice as you possibly could, you know,
and keeping appearances was one way that you survived.
Can you tell them --
You know, a lot of students wonder, like,
how did you make it through or how did you survive?
Were you telling yourself something?
Were you doing something to get through it every single day?
-You know, it's very interesting.
I cannot imagine my mother going through it.
Having children now myself,
whatever you suffer yourself is nothing,
but when you look at your children suffering --
And this was also another thing,
that I wanted my mother to feel a little better.
If she saw that my spirit was up, she could --
We were never separated.
We were always together the entire war,
which was very, very fortunate and very rare.
-Mm-hmm. -And I felt that if I appeared
to look decent and I kept my spirit,
it would give her some relief.
And it did, you know?
But as a young girl, you feel just indestructible.
I never believed that I will perish.
I felt, "I'm going to live,"
you know, to the degree where at one time there was --
during the High Holidays, they came.
We were forbidden to pray, to have anything religious,
and there was a group of orthodox people
who decided that they're going to pray no matter what.
And the Germans spotted it and they came in
and they selected a number of people
and they were shooting them and beating them.
And I was sitting at my bench working,
and as they were walking out,
the man who did the most shootings stood behind me,
and you were not allowed to even turn your head.
You had to work like nothing was happening the entire time.
And then I heard a click,
and I thought he pulled out a cigarette to light
and was shutting the case
'cause they all had silver cigarette cases.
This doesn't exist here, I think, now.
-Yeah, yeah.
-But they always counted the cigarettes in the cases.
What showed he up -- he didn't have a cigarette case.
He had a gun to my head, and he pulled the trigger.
And there was no bullet, so he looked around.
And I admired my mother.
In all that, she was sitting over at that end
of the room looking at it.
She was as white as a ghost.
She never said one word because he was looking around,
if my life mattered anything to anybody,
since nobody responded, nobody cared.
He didn't feel like reloading the gun and walked out.
-Oh, my gosh. -So, you know, you never knew --
You can't say that you did anything to save you,
I thought, because it was so unpredictable,
you wouldn't know. -Yeah. Yeah.
That's -- Gosh, that's just a crazy story.
-Yeah. -Let's see here.
We've got a question
from Saint George's seventh-grade class.
They were wondering --
and they've probably learned about this in their class.
So, you had a number on your uniform.
Were you ever tattooed with that number?
-No, because only Auschwitz
and some of the bigger extermination camps
did the tattooing.
I can't quite figure out, why were they tattooing people
when they were sending them to the ovens or be shot.
But that was their logic.
But since I went the labor-camp route,
we were not tattooed.
-Early on, I got a question
about how you were liberated and how old were you.
Let's see here.
I'm trying to find their question,
but it's up here somewhere,
so I can give you a shout-out out there.
-Yes, that was a very good one
because when the war was ending, we were in Leipzig,
and the overseers
didn't want to go to the front,
so they all gathered us into what they called a death march.
We were marching 24 hours a day.
Every now and then, they would let us stop for a little while.
We were outdoors the whole time.
There were thousands of people.
You probably saw some films of people marching,
and they gave us no food.
We were marching for three weeks.
And then it showed up --
I looked at the map after the war --
that we were just going in circles.
And then one day,
they divided us into groups of 300 women,
and they put us into a barn for the night.
That was the first night
that we could just rest the whole night.
And in the morning we opened the barn door,
and a pile of German uniforms were laying there.
They evidently escaped and left us there.
And the foreman of the estate
came in and said, "Look, I'm only a farmer.
We have no food for 300 people,
but if you give us few people, we have months of potatoes
that were stored for the winter."
That was made by them.
This was near Leipzig.
"Then you can cook soup.
I'll have a little milk to put to the water with the potatoes,
and then you all have --"
And that was our saving because after starving so long,
people who are in camps where the armies walked in --
And the soldiers meant well and gave people food.
A lot of people died because they couldn't tolerate the food.
But we were safe because --
But then we found out that we were in no-man's-land,
which means, when two countries come together,
there is a strip in between that doesn't belong to anybody.
And we were in between the British and Russian fronts.
So, we stayed in that barn for a few days.
And all of a sudden, two Russian soldiers came on a motorcycle,
and one of them got to the mayor of town,
pulled down to him, and said,
"I want those women in private homes.
Everybody in town has to take a few people in order for them
not to live like that, to be --
So they took us in, and as a matter of fact,
somebody found some German Nazi insignia on that farm.
But we were very comfortably over there.
Obviously, no newspaper, no radio, no news from anything,
but we couldn't care less because for the first time
we slept on the bed.
As a matter of fact, the first night we slept on the floor
because the beds were too soft for us.
And every few days, somebody would go to an adjoining town
where there was a bakery and bring bread.
And one day I went with my friend,
which I was with the entire war,
to pick up the bread from the other town.
And a Russian soldier on the way met us and said,
"How come you're wearing your prison dresses?"
So, we said, "What do you mean? We don't have anything else.
All we have is this one dress."
He said, "Didn't you hear?
The war is over for five days already."
We had no idea. -Wow.
-And then we dropped everything.
We ran back to town to tell everybody the war was over,
but we still had nowhere to go.
But the Russians would come
and the commandant of the Russian army of the area
came in, and he wanted to have a good time.
He saw young girls, so he --
So, I decided I have to be very, very careful
because they were always --
there was a lot of rape going on at that time.
And he was --
I said, "I'll play along because he has the arms," you know?
-Yeah. Right. -So, I got him very drunk,
and he finally --
There was some woman who to me looked like an old woman.
She was probably 25.
Because he brought a big diamond
to give whoever will sleep with him.
And he slept with her.
And that was over that evening.
But the next morning, a Jewish doctor from the army,
from the Russian army, came
and brought two valises,
one for my mother, one for me,
and said, "You better run away right away
because he realizes what you have done,
and he's coming tonight to play with vengeance."
So, we left right away,
and we immediately headed for Kraków
because being that the family was out from there
that's where we will find everybody.
So, then we landed on platforms
to go back home.
There were transports, military transports
that were carrying people back to Poland,
to Russia on that train,
and every few stations we had to change
because they needed this train,
that train, so it took us a week...
-Wow. Yeah.
-...for a trip that probably takes about 7, 8 hours.
And we finally wound up in Kraków
and came to the building, to our house.
And we decided to wait there to see if anybody survived.
-So, was someone else living there?
You know, sometimes that happened.
-It was very interesting
because when we had to leave Kraków,
we gave our apartment to our tenant's niece
because she had no work.
She came from Western Poland and had nowhere to live.
And when we came, she says she won't live with strangers,
wouldn't let us in.
We still could see our furniture inside, but she wouldn't us in.
But then another neighbor
whom we didn't give anything, took us in.
And then we got an assignment,
and I immediately enrolled at the university
because my mother felt that education is worth everything.
-So, you were 18 at that time? -I was 18 at the time, yes.
And what they did, which was very nice --
they gave us a year at the university
to make high school equivalency,
So, as a result I wound up getting
my high-school equivalency
and finishing my college at the time
that I normally would have graduated from college.
-Wow.
-And I think I might be the only one
who has a doctorate without ever going to high school
because I got an honorary doctorate
from Seton Hall University
for my work with the Christian world.
-And let's actually talk about that.
I mean, man, we could probably talk for another hour.
And look -- it's already 12:55 our time.
What I would love for you to do now --
if you wouldn't mind talking about, you know,
when you came over to the States,
your work with Sister Rose,
your work to get this monument behind us,
you know, erected,
and, you know, what you've been doing,
you know, and spreading the message
and spreading your message to school kids
and everybody alike, you know?
-I decided when I came to the States
and my life became much more normal
that I'm going to have revenge on the Germans.
And the only -- Actually, Nazis.
I shouldn't say Germans
because it's not right
to make them all equal.
And I think my revenge was
that I was going to have a positive life
and do something with the society
that will make a difference,
and I worked very closely with the Christian world
because I feel that we need to work together
to improve our relations
and to prevent this kind of animosity building up.
Actually, it's not an animosity --
a prejudice against one group.
And we have done tremendous strides.
I met Sister Rose, who was a very renowned nun
who actually contributed
toward the "Nostra aetate" edict,
which in '64 was obviously in Vatican saying --
first of all, absolving Jews from the sin of killing Christ
and also saying that we have to embrace each other
and all the other nations.
And it has been very rewarding.
The response of the world is wonderful,
and this what my work is.
And I think that for the young people,
they have to open up their eyes and arms to other races,
to other religions,
to other cultures, to see that we are all equal,
that we all need to work with each other
because that's the only way that this world will survive.
-Yeah.
Well, Luna, thank you for that wonderful message,
and I'm looking here.
We've still -- We've got a lot of questions
and a lot of participants.
Look at all that.
Can you see all that, right there on this slide?
Look at all those questions.
Unfortunately, we can't answer all of them today,
and I know we have to be kind of aware --
-Well, one question I'm very certain that I could --
Forgive. To forgive.
-Oh, yeah, let's talk about that.
Yeah. Have you been able to forgive?
-You know, everybody asks me, "Do you hate the Germans?"
And I said, "Hate doesn't take any space in my being
because it would only spoil my life
and the people I would hate wouldn't even know about it.
And it would also hamper my doing the right things.
So, this is something I read
in a cleaning store once, a little proverb --
"Hate is like an acid.
It spoils the container and everything in it."
And I refuse to be...
-Yeah. A container for it. Yeah.
-That's my closing for that. -I like that.
I like that a lot.
Well, as I said, we could probably talk
for at least another hour, so I'm sorry we don't have that.
I want to thank everybody for watching with us today,
and I'm going to switch over --
You're going to see the room switch one more time.
And if you want more of Luna, which I know you guys -- You do.
So, when you're home tonight --
-- hopefully this will load up in one second --
you're gonna see -- Yes.
Here tonight, Luna will be talking to a live audience
at the museum with another Holocaust survivor.
The cool thing, with the powers of technology
is that you can actually watch this live, as well,
from your computer, just kind of like how you're doing now.
It's an event on Livestream.
So, you guys can see the link right there.
If you click on that at 6:00 Central Time,
you'll see Luna, and she'll be talking to a live audience here.
So, that's going to be another really neat thing.
And actually, you know,
I said we were gonna close with this Martin Niemoller quote.
I'm going to bring it up again.
And I'm going to bring up a poll question related to it.
Let's see here.
Now, my poll question for you all --
and this is one actually --
Instead of you answering a question,
I'm going to have you type in your answer.
So, what is this quote, do you think?
What is the lesson?
What is the meaning based on what, you know,
you've heard Luna say today
and based on what you've talked about in your class
with the Holocaust,
what do you think the meaning is?
You're going to see right there you can type in your answer.
I'm going to leave that quote up there for a second,
but, teachers, let me give you some final reminders
before we really officially close out today.
There's some resources there.
You see in that little box that says "web links."
There you can find some museum resources about the Holocaust.
I've sent along a lesson plan and a teacher guide.
If you didn't get that, it's right there,
bibliographies for further reading.
Local teachers --
So I know we have a lot of Louisiana teachers tuning in.
We're going to have an Echoes & Reflections workshop here.
It's on, I think, February 26th, and let me double check that.
Yes, so, on February 26th,
run by our local Anti-Defamation League chapter.
So, that's a really good workshop
if you've never been to it.
Also, Luna has a book,
and I also included the Amazon link to that book.
And that's the kind of bottom link that you see on there.
And so if you want to know more about her and about her life,
her amazing life, her amazing story,
you can read her book
And we're actually going to look at some of --
I'm going to bring up your student responses here.
Let's see if we can see them.
Let me broadcast the results here.
All right. What did you guys say?
"That you have to speak up when you have the chance,
and you have to do it with boldness and courage."
Man, I love that.
"Always speak up against injustice."
"Stand up for other people even though they are not like you."
Oh, man.
Well, I think you guys, you know, really understood,
you know, what this webinar today was about
and, you know, why we spend time studying this in school.
Teachers, I'm going to actually --
I'm going to leave this up for you to keep responding,
but I'm going to be giving you one final reminder.
And, sorry, it's a plug for the museum.
We have another --