Poignant meeting with Holocaust survivor

The Lagan College Year 13 History class had the immense privilege of meeting Susan Pollack and hearing her harrowing story of how she narrowly survived the Holocaust. Susan was a member of a Hungarian Jewish family from a village called Felsogod in Hungary. Her tranquil family life was torn apart by the rise of fascism in Hungary and the takeover of the country by the Nazis. Soon she was removed from school. Her family were made to identify their faith by wearing Jewish stars. They were transported to a Ghetto, a sealed in area of a town to force Jews within. She remembers her parents handing her a tissue filled with some of their gold teeth to throw out as they felt they would be identified wrongly as wealthy.

Soon the families were rounded up and transported to Auschwitz Birkenau concentration camp. She described their arrival and the faces of Terror as the cattle truck doors were pulled open. One Kindly Sonderkommando, a Jewish person forced to work for the Nazis in the camps, whispered for her to say she was over 15. Her answer of 15 and a half, together with her height helped her get into the line to live. Most of her family however was placed in to a line to the gas chamber. She was told very soon after this separation that her mother had been gassed. Susan was selected to be sent to a factory for slave labour. As the Soviets advanced however she was force marched to Bergen Belsen, a camp she described as hell on Earth. She described the mountains of corpses left everywhere and how she was so joyful to meet a woman from her village only to see her lying dead one day later. She describes how prisoners so rarely were allowed to talk that she almost forgot how to. Her most overwhelming memory was when the British and Canadians liberated the camp and how one lifted her body, treating her with so much kindness that she found it overwhelming. It had been so long since she had been treated with any form of humanity.
Susan left a deep message of hope together with a stark warning to stand up when counted. She advised our young students about the emerging threats in the world and how she fears that this could happen again. This was a wonderful opportunity which I know our young people will remember forever.