My Lesson For The Rest of My Life

Today in my holocaust & genocide studies class we had a REAL survivor of the holocaust. His name..

~Fred Baron~

He begain by tellin us htat when he was only 15 years old,Hitler came to power. THe night of kristallnacht (night of broken glass) was when he was first arrested by the nazi's. When he was let out, his sister and him fled to hungary & stayed with someone who was hiding jews. In march 1944 the nazi's deproted 750,000 jews from hungary to various camps. THey were put in cattle cars (packed with people) & it took 3 days to get to the camp. 3 DAYS! Without food or water..or sunlight :(

Throughout those 3 days babies were born in the cattle cars, people died & people went crazy. When the doors were opened and a burst of light came through, it took him a few hours to adjust to the light because it had been so long. He was taken to auschwitz & saw people being yelled at, black smoke stacks, and people being KILLED! Actually saw it.. How terrible.

Over 20,000 people were killed in auschwitz each day. Including his mother and father.

While the war was still going on, a british doctor found him walking on the side of the road & brought him home and nuresed him back to health. Sorta. He still had to go to the hospital to recover. But like all things in life, everything has a plan. At he hospital he met his future wife who was also a holocaust survior and they got married! He found his sister (now in florida) & he talks to high school groups about this. I wish i could be that brave.

At the end, at he was tearing up. (I started crying too), he said "I don't talk about this just to inform.. I don't need to be reminded of this horid tragety that happened to me, i do it so that your generation will be more accepting of people, because my generation didn't"

Literally broke.my.heart.

It made me realize even more, how rich & privlaged we truely are in america. SOme of us forget that & need to be reminded.

He is the deffenition of a true hero <3