Holocaust Survivor Visits AHS, Recounts Experiences

ELLEN LI
News Editor

The Holocaust left behind a tragic legacy, and there remains much bitterness in its aftermath. For decades, many survivors refused to speak of the war, as it would bring back traumatic memories.

However, some have come to terms with their past in order to lift the curtain of silence. One of these survivors who has broken the silence is Sasha Erlik, who visited AHS to recount his experiences on March 29.

Over the duration of the last two months, English teacher Debi Kuperberg and AVID and American History teacher Jose Sanchez developed a Holocaust unit to teach their students. Its purpose was not only to educate students about the genocide that occurred during World War II in Europe but also to empower them to prevent similar events from occurring in the future.

“Learning about the Holocaust really opened my eyes about what atrocities people went through and how unfair and inhumane it really was,” senior Lynnette Chavez said. “It taught me how far racism and prejudice could end up.”

The unit consisted of traditional lectures, student presentations, Socratic seminars, field trips and films before finally culminating in a visit from a Holocaust survivor.

Erlik, a family friend of Kuperberg’s, was invited to speak to the students about his time as a Jew in the German concentration camps during World War II.

Erlik, who was born in 1925, came from an affluent Jewish family in Czechoslovakia. He was only fourteen-years-old when his country was occupied by Germany, and the Germans tried to eliminate all Jews in Czechoslovakia and the countries around it. During the war, he and his family were sent to Auschwitz and other concentration camps. Erlik recounted stories about his experiences in working in the camps and the struggles he faced there. However, not all of the memories were of hardships; there was also the unexpected kindness he received from a German doctor who had saved his life.

Erlik attributed his survival to luck and also to his positive outlook in life; despite his experiences during the war, he remains optimistic about the future, and he encouraged the students to do the same.

“Here in the U.S., there were [support] groups of [Holocaust survivors after the war]. I went to one of the meetings and all they talked about was the past. They didn’t talk about the future and how nice it is or how good it is, they only talk[ed] about how terrible it was there,” Erlik said. “I didn’t want to listen to it, but I want you to listen to it so you’ll be able to tell [others] what was going on. But for me the important thing was the future, so I never went back to one of those groups because they were always so negative. I’ve always been very positive.”

Today, Erlik continues to speak to high school and college students as he has done over the last twenty years so that other students will also become witness to this tragedy by hearing his testimony.

“It was one thing to learn about the Holocaust and be sad about it, but to actually hear a person who went through what we read about just takes it on a whole different level,” senior Tamara Theola said. “It’s now something more than what’s in the history book for me; I actually feel connected to it.”