Holocaust survivor tells her story to American History students

3/24/03

Mira Kimmelman, a 79-year-old concentration camp survivor, related the story of her childhood fleeing Nazi persecution and her internment in Treblinka, Auschwitz, and Bergen-Belsen camps during the Third Reich to over 100 of Mr. David Brown's U.S. History students Monday. In a soft, sad voice, Ms. Kimmelman told students of her last days with her family and her experiences in surviving the Nazi regime. She asked the students to carry her story forward as her legacy against hate and racism in the world. Her full story is related in Leaf-Chronicle correspondent Cameron Collin's story (as follows):

Mira Kimmelman, a Holocaust survivor, speaks with U.S. History students at

Rossview High School Monday. Kimmelman lost many of her family members

during the Holocaust and tells her story so that generations after will be

able to tell the story. Alicia Archuleta/The Leaf-Chronicle

 

Rossview High students Neely Wall, left, and Tobitha Harris listen to the

story Monday about Mira Kimmelman's experience during the Holocaust.

Alicia Archuleta/The Leaf-Chronicle

 

 

Holocaust survivor shares story with Rossview High

Holocaust survivor Mira Kimmelman passed on a responsibility Monday to more than 100 high school students who heard her testament about atrocities during World War II.

Kimmelman, 79, who authored "Echoes from the Holocaust" as her biographical account of persecution and attempted genocide by Adolf Hitler's Third Reich, told David Brown's U.S. history students at Rossview High they are her legacy.

She entrusted students with her story and implored them never to allow hate to perpetrate such adehumanizing crime in the future.

Rossview High junior Tobitha Harris said the message she heard was one of inspiration.

"You can't make it in life without moral support, the support of your family," Tobitha said. "But when your family is there to support you, it'll always come out positive no matter how hard it is."

But what struck Tobitha most was Kimmelman's account of horrors faced by young children between 4 and 10. Kimmelman said men of the concentration camp were forced into labor and made to dig a mass grave in the forest for the children, who were machine-gunned and dumped into the grave.

"I almost cried," Tobitha said. "I wouldn't think any human being with a beating heart could do that to children."

Historians estimate about three million Polish Jews were killed between 1939 and 1945, many of them at Auschwitz-Birkenau where four large gas chambers and crematories worked 24 hours a day.

"The stench of burning human flesh will never leave me," Kimmelman told the students. "It was a death factory.They were killing and burning 3,000 Jews a day."

Like Tobitha, Neely Wall, a Rossview High junior, took from Kimmelman the message of hope in survival.

"You can watch it in movies or read it in books, but having her come and talk to us made it so much more real,"Neely said. "I think she told us and showed us there aren't many like her around who survived and it's important for us to listen, pass their stories along so that it can't happen again. We can't let it happen again."

Brown, a U.S. history teacher in Clarksville-Montgomery County for four years, grew up in Oak Ridge, where Kimmelman lives, and delivered newspapers to her as a young boy.

"The message from her generation is so important because they are leaving us pretty quickly," he said. "If students can hear it first-hand, they can put a face with the story, and that's vital to getting the word out."

Kimmelman told the students she shares her story for three reasons, letting them know what tragedies can happen in the name of hate, intolerance, racism and bigotry, because some people already discount the Holocaust ever occurred and to speak for those who didn't survive, like her mother and younger brother.

While in German custody, Kimmelman was pulled from a line marching from the Warsaw ghetto to a railroad station. "I never had the chance to embrace my mother, I never had the chance to kiss my mother," she said. "And I never saw my mother again. There were about 600 to 620 of 20,000 left behind, and we were the only ones left alive.

"They were gassed to death and their bodies burned. There was nothing left, only ashes. I have no grave,nothing but my memories. Memories can save lives, I can assure you."

(Cameron Collins covers education and can be reached at 245-0716 or by e-mail at cameroncollins@theleafchronicle.com. )

Originally published Tuesday, March 25, 2003