Herricks hosts a Holocaust survivor for powerful middle school talk

Herricks seventh graders were met face to face with history when a Holocaust survivor personally shared her story with them. 

“It was extremely powerful for the students,”  said Meredith Matson, the district’s K-12 director of social studies. “It was just remarkable to hear her story of remembrance of such a tragic event, but also her story of hope.” 

Holocaust survivor Marion Blumenthal Lazan spoke to Herricks’ entire seventh-grade class, which totals nearly 400 students, on April 29. She read from her memoir, “Four Perfect Pebbles,” sharing her story as a prisoner in the German Bergen-Belsen concentration camp when she was a child. 

Lazan, now in her 90s, spoke about spending two weeks on a train with no food, water or bathroom facilities as a 9-year-old, weighing only 35 pounds. Many people did not survive the experience, she said, including her father. She said she was saved by the kindness of strangers who nursed her back to health once the war was over. She later immigrated with her mother and brother to the United States.

“Everybody was completely silent and just so engaged in listening to her story and understanding what it would be like to live in such horrific living conditions, yet still having hope,” Matson said. “It just brought so much humanity to the Holocaust for the students.”

While lessons on the Holocaust are typically taught in eighth grade, Matson said she and the seventh-grade history teachers had worked to create additional seventh-grade lessons to prepare students for Lazan’s talk. As the students Lazan asked question after question, Matson said she felt the lessons had taught them well.

“They asked so many good questions. Just at every moment, there were hands up in the audience, asking about her experience and how it impacted her,” Matson said.

She said the event truly affected the seventh graders, who wanted to continue asking Lazan questions long after the event ended through their recess and lunch periods.

“I think something really telling is that after she was done speaking…almost half the student body stayed back,” Matson said. “They wanted to shake her hand. They wanted to hug her. They wanted to meet her. They wanted to speak with her. And for seventh graders to miss outdoor recess and to just want to be in her space was so telling and so powerful.”

Matson said Lazan came to speak at Herricks after being asked by one of the middle-school’s history teachers, whose own children had heard Lazan speak in their classes and had found the experience meaningful.  

“She talked a lot about the importance of really trying to understand each other and respect each other, respect all cultures and all religions,” Matson said. “I think that it went beyond the Holocaust to also understanding how we all need to accept, come together and connect with each other.”

Lazan will return to Herricks to speak to the eighth-grade class on May 20.