Holocaust survivor speaks to students

BLOOMINGTON - Bloomington Junior High School's knights welcomed a different kind of hero on Oct. 30.

Sixth-graders who filled the cafeteria participated in an hour-long presentation by Marion Blumenthal Lazan, a German-born Jew who was imprisoned by the Nazis during the Holocaust.

Lazan, who was just 4 years old when World War II began, recounted her "6½ years of torment," including fleeing to Holland in search of asylum, her family's capture by the SS and their 18-month internment in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany.

"My story is what Anne Frank might have told had she survived," Lazan said.

Lazan spoke for about 45 minutes from prepared notes before answering questions composed by a BJHS sixth-grade class that read her memoir, "Four Perfect Pebbles."

Teacher Kathleen Irvin, who has taught the book for more than a decade, said it was a thrill to finally bring Lazan to her school. Irvin organized the event, which was sponsored by Beyond the Books, after seeing Lazan at a conference near Peoria - Lazan's adopted hometown.

Even after reading her memoir, sixth-grader Kane Brooks was touched by Lazan's presentation.

"It gets you more emotional when you hear the person speaking rather than reading the book," he said. "It's hard to believe the harshness they had to go through."

Lazan also spoke at length about the conditions in the concentration camp, where she took to counting pebbles to represent the well-being of her family - herself, her parents and her older brother.

She spoke about being forced to live with 600 people in barracks made for 100, losing access to basic privacy and hygiene and attempting to stay healthy as other prisoners contracted dysentery and typhus.

"Our birthday present to one another was a small piece of bread we saved from the previous week," she said. "We learned there was a difference between head lice and body lice. Crushing them between my thumbnails became my pastime."

Lazan showed students her "yellow badge," the patch with a Star of David and the word "Jude" - German for "Jew" - that Nazis made Holocaust victims wear.

"That was another way to denigrate us, to isolate us," she said.

By her account, Lazan left the camp as an 11-year-old weighing only 35 pounds and sporting an infected injury from hot soup her mother tried to sneak to her. Her mother left at only 60 pounds but lived to 104 years old; her father died from typhus he caught in the camp.

Her brother escaped from the camp relatively unscathed, but the experience led him to settle into a quiet life in California and choose never to have children - in contrast to Lazan's frequent travel to tell her story and her three children, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren.

"We as children saw things no one should ever have to see," she said. "There is no way it can all be accurately put into words or pictures."

Brooks asked Lazan if she ever visited the Statue of Liberty, which she said was a defining event in her life. She and others bound for the United States got up at dawn to see the landmark from their ship.

Lazan also spoke about "Marion's Triumph," a 2003 PBS documentary based on her memoir, and played a song written for the stage based on her imprisonment called "Four Perfect Pebbles." Students teared up during the music.

While reliving the experience can be painful for Lazan as well - "I still feel a sense of fear when I see a German shepherd," she said - she believes it's critically important that future generations hear her story.

"By listening, I hope you prevent our past from becoming your future," she said.