It has been 63 years since Allied forces liberated Nazi concentration camps. With each passing year, fewer and fewer Holocaust survivors remain to tell their story.
Last week, local students had a rare chance to meet and hear from one of the living witnesses, Marion Blumenthal Lazan, who recounted her horrific childhood spent as a young Jewish girl in Nazi Germany to students at six local schools, including West Valley City's Monticello Academy.
"It's exhausting," said the Long Island woman speaking about the effort required to retell her story. "It never gets easier."
Despite the difficulty of discussing the stagnant, horrifying life she lived for 6 ½ years in transit and prison camps -- from age 4 to 10 -- she believes strongly that her story must be told.
"She actually made us feel what was happening," said Monticello Academy Spanish teacher Robert Morris after Lazan's speech, as his eyes were brimming with tears. "We have to make sure it never happens again."
The retelling is made easier, thanks to the presence of Nathaniel -- Lazan's husband of 55 years -- who is always by her side during speaking engagements, giving her moral support and bringing her warm drinks to calm her throat.
Salt Lake Junior Academy Principal Trevor Kendall arranged for the Lazans to come to Utah after his students read her book Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story . Salt Lake Junior Academy, a small Seventh-day Adventist school, sponsored the Lazans' trip.
Kendall has played the role of the Lazans' chauffeur and confidante during their stay, attending all seven presentations, including the final event at the South Towne Expo Center. Hearing Lazan's speech never gets old for the principal.
"The personal touch she brings is amazing," Kendall said. "I pick up new things each time. … She really purposefully ties in a lot of messages that are meant to build up the kids, messages on perseverance, messages on how to interact with their families -- and acceptance."
Lazan, a mother and grandmother, experienced a nightmare that few can comprehend, including a lengthy stay at the notorious concentration camp Bergen-Belsen.
Not consulting notes, Lazan, in her steady way, told students at Monticello Academy about the cruel transports in cattle cars, the disease, filth, starvation, constant foul odor of death, vicious German police dogs and the "ever-present, terrifying 12-foot-high barbed-wire fence."
As children listened, rapt, and as tears flowed down teachers' faces, Lazan talked about living in crude, heatless barracks that were meant for 100 people but actually housed 600. She discussed the bitter cold and how she was not -- in all those years -- able to brush her teeth. For years, Lazan didn't see a flower or a blade of grass.
In her thick German accent, Lazan told students about how she was given a small piece of bread once a week and was forced to subsist mainly on watery soup. When she was liberated at age 10, she weighed 37 pounds. Lazan's mother -- now 101 years old and living near Lazan on New York's Long Island -- weighed 60 pounds.
"There is no doubt that it was my mother's inner strength and fortitude that finally saw us through," Lazan said.
Huddled together in their bunk, sharing the same ratty blanket, the mother and daughter survived. Lazan's brother also lived, but her father died of typhus shortly after being liberated.
For the students and teachers who heard Lazan speak, it was a poignant history lesson they likely won't soon forget.
"It's pretty amazing," said Kearns teen Sergio Romero after listening to the speech at the South Towne Expo Center. "I'll appreciate more what I have."
In spite of the horror Lazan endured, her message was one of hope, peace and understanding.
People must love and respect each other, Lazan said, and it must begin at the kitchen table, in schools and in workplaces.
Lazan told the children how she stayed positive during the ordeal.
Day after day she tried to find four pebbles of the same size and shape. Each pebble represented a member of her family. If she could find the pebbles -- and she always did -- it meant that her family would remain whole.
Following Lazan's presentation at Monticello Academy, she was mobbed by children seeking hugs.
Lazan focused on each one individually, taking their faces into her hands, offering each child encouragement and a smile.
It's their job to pass on the Holocaust story to their children and grandchildren, Lazan said, so it won't ever happen again.
