Holocaust survivors ‘keep the legacy alive’ during annual remembrance day at The John Carroll School

Holocaust survivors and children of survivors spoke about traumatic experiences and the continued impact the genocide had on their lives Tuesday at The John Carroll School in Bel Air.

Fourteen survivors spoke to to the school’s senior class to educate and raise awareness about the Holocaust, during which 6 million Jewish men, women and children were killed. The visit is a part of John Carroll’s Holocaust Remembrance Day, a special event aimed at providing students firsthand accounts of those who survived a dark time in human history.

According to school officials, the program is meant to foster tolerance, understanding and respect among John Carroll students, who come from diverse backgrounds. Organizers and volunteers want Holocaust Remembrance Day to serve as a reminder of the importance of empathy and tolerance.

“It’s not pretty, it’s ugly, it’s evil and represents the worst human beings can be,” event organizer Louise Géczy said.

John Carroll’s senior class gathered in the school’s auditorium to listen to keynote speaker Charles Heller, a Prague-born Holocaust survivor who detailed his family’s efforts to evade being sent to concentration camps.

“This event is extremely important to keep the legacy alive,” Heller said. “I really want to educate the kids on what actually happened in order to prevent such a thing from happening again.”

Heller discussed how his family’s lives were turned upside down in 1939 after Nazi Germany began occupying his home country of Czechoslovakia, now split up as the Czech Republic and Slovakia.

According to Heller, his Jewish father, Rudolph, fled to join the Czechoslovak Brigade of the British army, while Heller and his mother were taken in by farmers.

Even though Heller was raised Catholic, Nazi Germany had categorized him as Jewish due to the fact Heller had three Jewish grandparents. According to Heller, his father’s family was Jewish while his mother was born to a Catholic mother and a Jewish father.

As Heller’s relatives were taken to concentration camps, his mother, Ilona, saved his life by lying to Germany’s racial courts. According to Heller, his mother sued the German racial courts for deeming her not “Aryan of pure blood” and planned to deceive the Nazis by claiming both her parents were Catholics.

“My grandmother lied and risked her own reputation that she had been made pregnant by some guy named Hans Gruber,” Heller said. “My mother spent the entire war fighting to save my life.”

In April 1945, the Nazi German racial courts ruled Heller’s mother was an “Aryan of pure blood,” and she was eventually taken to a labor camp for Christian wives of Jewish men.

Heller’s account of his experiences surviving the Holocaust left an impact on students, such as 18-year-old Ben Shutt, who served as a student guide for Heller on Tuesday. Shutt said Heller’s firsthand account of the Holocaust makes the historic event more relevant beyond textbooks.

“I think Heller has such a rare experience,” Shutt said. “We learn about so many things in a classroom that it all blends together, but hearing from someone who actually went through it, makes it even more of a present issue.”

Ella McGuire, 17, said her school’s Holocaust Remembrance Day is essential to remind younger generations of the tragic events of the Holocaust. McGuire served as a student guide for one of the speakers and was happy about the chance to spend close time with survivors.

“Learning about the Holocaust, I’ve been interested in wanting to make a difference,” McGuire said. “Keeping the story alive is so important.”

After the keynote presentation concluded, John Carroll’s seniors were split up into small groups so more survivors could tell their experiences throughout the school.

One survivor, 88-year-old Esther Kaidanow, discussed how in 1941, when she was 6 years old, Nazi and Italian troops occupied her home country of Yugoslavia, now Serbia and Montenegro. According to Kaidanow, her family had to hide in different villages as well as the Alps mountain range.

In 1944, Kaidanow remembered reuniting with her father and brother at a displaced persons camp, which was a designated area for Eastern European refugees established in liberated areas. According to Kaidanow, she and her family were then brought to another displaced persons camp in the United States before moving to Philadelphia. Kaidanow eventually moved to Baltimore with her husband, Howard, another Holocaust survivor, to raise their two children.

“When we came to the United States we were overjoyed,” Kaidanow said.