Holocaust Survivor Speaks at Piedmont

5/7/2014

A sea of seventh graders spontaneously rose to their feet today at the completion of Dr. Susan Cernyak-Spatz' talk this morning in our auditorium.

Dr. Spatz is professor emerita at UNCC ,the mother of a former Piedmont teacher, plus grandmother of several Piedmont alum. She agreed to share her story with our students at the request of our Humanities department. Students were riveted- they "knew" the holocaust but you never REALLY know something until you hear a first-hand story from someone who lived through it.

Though her talk and introductory film clip, students learned things that are not common knowledge about the holocaust on the political arena and in its details in her own life and that of those most affected, including:

Eisenhower personally attended to a gruelingly detailed tour of concentration camps. It was difficult for him but he insisted so he would be able to speak out if detractors tried to say the atrocities were propaganda.
She felt lucky at being sent to Auschwitz-Birkenau. Had she been sent to camps any further east, it would have meant certain death, as those camps were only for extermination.
She was assigned number 34042 at the camp, a number she carries tattooed on her arm to this day. (She showed students after her talk, photos below)

Memorable quotes paraphrased from Dr. Spatz via my live-tweet of this important occasion:

Upon arrival at Auschwitz-Buchenwald concentration camp :

"I was lucky. I got tie-up shoes. If you got clogs, it was like getting your death certificate. We had no socks so you would get sores on your feet and then blood poisoning within a few days"
"We were given underwear, just a shift or boxer short type that "felt like wood" and
"We were given one bowl: to eat, to drink and to eliminate. One bowl. No fork no knife...we were reduced to animals"
"We learned "if you need to use the bucket (outhouse) at night the guard would hit you behind the head with a large stick [because they did not want to have to empty it], You had to use your bowl [washing it out the next morning for your tea]"

On the morning beverage: "It was black. Sometimes they said it was coffee; sometimes they said it was tea. You drank as much of it as you could because the only other drink- water-was unclean and would make you sick."

On surviving a concentration camp:

The best way to survive was to know someone who was working an inside job. I was lucky because in block 3 I was an interpreter and I met a "runner"
"We had a friend in common from Prague and bc of that connection I was out within two days. I was deloused & given socks"
That's how I found in the records about my mom who had died in Sobibor but my handwriting was too bad so I lost that job
It was an unwritten rule that once you worked in the safer inside jobs at Aushwitz-Birkenau, if you lost one job on the "inside" they would not move you back to the outside.
After the Death March out in 1945 (in which she was allowed to put on as much clothes as she could wear to try to survive the walk...)they find the Americans "Since I was the only one who could speak English I walked up to the GI and said where do we go? He said "Go back where you came from" We rolled up our sleeves & showed the tattoos..."

On Freedom:

"For three years I had never been without a guard around me and now I could do what I wanted. That was my liberation"

On what she wants students to take away from her talk:

"Of the 14 architects of the final solution, 11 had PhDs. As you continue your education, I ask you for this and my final advice to you is this: When you begin your careers, as you talk and discuss and make plans:
Stay Human"

Question everything!

Showing her tattoo. Her reply when students asked why she didn't have it removed "Why would I want to have it removed?"

Survivor explaining the importance of remembering the past when asked why she did not remove her tattoo #admiration pic.twitter.com/F2N9nF9afO
— Lisa Gurthie (@LisGurthie) May 7, 2014