As a child who just survived the Holocaust, Erika Neuman told her mother she would never speak to her in German "because I hate the Germans like I've never hated anybody." She has remembered her father's response in the 50 years since: "you're no better than the worst German."
Her father told her if she continued to hate the Germans, others who care about her, one day maybe her children, might learn to also hate them.
"'It could happen,' he said. 'But really and truly the only person you're going to hurt is yourself.'"
AU's Jewish Student Association invited Neuman to speak Sunday night in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Week, which began on Sunday.
It took Neuman a very long time to understand what her father meant, she said.
"He wanted me to be a normal human being, not consumed by hate," she said. "Once I understood, I told him, 'I will not hate.'"
Neuman, born in Czechoslovakia on June 12, 1928, stayed in a ghetto located in modern-day Ukraine with her family during Nazi occupation. She and her sister escaped from the ghetto in 1943 with false papers, but Neuman could not immigrate to the United States until almost 20 years later.
During her re-telling of her personal story, Neuman spoke of both the tragic events that occurred once the Nazi regime took over and of her happy memories before the Nazis came to power.
She told the story of "strange men" who came to her door and told her family to come to the town square. With the entire town gathered by the school playground, a group of four men shot and killed the neighborhood Rabbi as well as other men, in front of their families and children.
"I thought I should ask my father if I am going to have to die too," Neuman said. "I asked him, 'Am I going to die tonight?' But he just said, 'please, stop crying.' How could I stop crying? I couldn't stop, but my father didn't have a good answer for me."
It was an unlucky accident that Neuman's family lived in Eastern Europe at all, as her father intended for the family to move to Palestine. He knew Hitler was coming to power, Neuman said, and her father believed this would not bode well for the Jews.
"When my father told my grandfather, [he] thought it was a very good idea," Neuman said. "'But you know,' he told my father, 'you have to have somebody take my horse, the cow and the chickens.'"
Her father could not find anybody to take the animals off his hands, so the family never left for Palestine, Neuman said.
Neuman's speech about her experience during the Holocaust is a reminder of how the past must be remembered to protect the future, the theme of Holocaust Remembrance Week, according to JSA President Eli Engelbourg, a sophomore in the Kogod School of Business.
"[The week's focus] starts with the past, inviting a Holocaust survivor to speak, holding a 24-hour name reading," he said. "We then move towards the future with a screening of the film Paperclip and a panel discussion."
Spending her childhood days in Stanesti, a Romanian town, Neuman frequently visited her grandparents' house, where she collected eggs from chickens' nests and rode the little horse her grandfather bought her.
But her family's life in the town was disrupted, first by the Soviet Union's occupation, then when Romania allied with Nazi Germany. As one of the Jewish families targeted by the police, the Neuman family once returned to discover their home was ransacked.
"Everything was upside down ... in the library, the books were on the floor, pages were torn out, it looked terrible," Neuman said. "I started to cry ... and I didn't cry for the books - I didn't read anyway - but I couldn't stand that everything looked so different."
One day soon after, the town's chief of police told her father to escape and take his family to Czernowitz. Once in Czernowitz, the Neuman family lived in a ghetto.
"To say it was bad is not enough. But I don't have another word ... it was terrible. There was no food, there was no water, there was nothing," Neuman said.
In the ghetto one day, Neuman said she saw a German soldier on crutches, standing on one and beating a man. She stopped and repeated something her father had always told her: "you cannot take the law into your own hands."
"The soldier replied, 'this man's nothing, he's a dirty Jew.' But I said, 'who cares what he is, he's doing nothing to you,'" Neuman said.
She continued to talk to the soldier until a policeman took her by the shoulder and told her it was time to go.
"I don't know what got into me because I never, ever stopped, I, never, ever talked to anybody," she said.
Neuman and her sister escaped the ghetto with the help of a Greek Orthodox priest, a family friend. The priest gave the girls papers attesting they were Greek Orthodox, allowing them to travel to Kiev.
Neuman now volunteers for the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, traveling to schools and telling her story of being a survivor. The museum also sponsored her speech at AU.
Holocaust Remembrance Week will continue with a panel on modern-day genocide Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Butler Board Room.
You can reach this staff writer klitvin@theeagelonline.com
