Holocaust Survivors Tell Their Stories
- Details
-
Published on Tuesday, 27 January 2009 00:45
Rosette Gerbosi was 13 when her parents were taken from Paris to Auschwitz. She never heard from them again and to this day does not know how they died. "I stress three messages," she told an audience at AMU Monday afternoon. "How important it is to: cherish your family, value the freedoms in the U.S. and respect people's differences." (Above: Mrs. Gerbosi with survivor Jacques Van Dam)
Along with fellow holocaust survivors Jacques and Sabine Van Dam (pictured center and right), Mrs. Gerbosi was at AMU as part of a program by the Holocaust Museum of Southwest Florida. Through the program almost 10,000 people in Collier and Lee counties have heard the first-hand experiences of survivors. The museum also brings an actual boxcar used to transport Jews during WWII to area schools and it has spent almost a week at the Grammar and Prep school. Students there were to hear from two other survivors Tuesday.
Relatives of Mrs. Gerbosi's parents spirited her away to a part of France controlled by the Vichy government, where she was harbored by a Catholic family.
Mr. and Mrs. Van Dam were in Holland. They knew each other as children before the war, then were reunited afterward. Although each survivor's story was different, there were many similarities: Being forced to wear a Jewish star, their families' realization that they would need to flee, and the extraordinary efforts by fellow citizens who risked their own lives to hide them.
Mrs. Van Dam's family fled to Belgium and was able to stay together in hiding almost until the war's end. But late in 1944 they were discovered and her parents were on the last train to leave Brussels for Auschwitz. In December - less than a month before Auschwitz was liberated - her parents were sent to other camps. It would take her six years to confirm that they were killed.
Auschwitz was liberated by Russian troops on January 27, 1945 and the date is recognized as Holocaust Remembrance Day.
