Students reconnect with past, culture

Thousands of people stand writhing in pain, gasping for breath as people crowd around… Thousands of people stand writhing in pain, gasping for breath as people crowd around watching with awe-struck expressions on their faces.

Someone gasps as they read the sign fixed to this model of the gas chambers at the Auschwitz concentration camp. The sign announces that the real victims of Auschwitz had been told that they were just going to take a shower, because one louse could cause an infestation.

The model shows with great detail how the German Nazis killed many Jewish people throughout the Holocaust.

On Sunday, Hillel, an international organization for Jewish college students, sponsored a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., where students from Pitt and Carnegie Mellon University were able to view this model, as well as many other exhibits concerning and artifacts from the Holocaust.

“It was a truly sobering experience,” said Jackie Braslawsce, the Jewish student life coordinator for Hillel. “It made me proud to be Jewish. It made me want to learn more about being Jewish. It made me want to carry on the legacy of the Jewish people and carry on the story of the Holocaust.”

For Mark Shabason, president of Hillel and a senior at Pitt, the experience at the museum was a very personal one. Prior to entering the permanent exhibit, each person was given an identification card with the history of a Jewish person who lived during the Holocaust.

“The passport that I got, by chance, was my great-grandfather,” Shabason said. “The fact that I got it made the experience much more real, because I have been hearing stories about him all of my life.”

Shabason’s great-grandfather was a victim of the Jewish persecution that took place throughout the Holocaust.

Freshman Emily Haimowitz also had relatives in Europe during the time of the Holocaust. She did not recall their exact fate, but for her, the experience at the museum was just as moving.

“I’ve been to the Holocaust Museum before,” Haimowitz said. “It’s not fun – it’s disturbing – but I like being there. It’s important to my culture.”

Among the exhibits at the museum was a room full of shoes taken from Jewish people before they were sent to a concentration camp and murdered, beds from Auschwitz that people who were kept there slept on, and a railway car that was used to transport Jewish people to the concentration camp.

“I think the most disturbing part that brings the Holocaust to life is the train,” Haimowitz said. “You’re in the train that they were in, and you can just picture hundreds of people in there.”

The area inside the train car was not much bigger than one of the double rooms in the Litchfield Towers, but Nazis would squeeze approximately 100 people into it at a time. As a result, those inside the car were forced to stand for the entire trip to the camps, which sometimes lasted for days.

There were also graphic videos of medical tests performed on detainees, as well as audio clips of Holocaust victims.

“The part that really made me cry was listening to the voices of Auschwitz,” Braslawsce said. “They really put voices to the experience.”

Despite its emotionally heavy content, the museum is family-oriented. One exhibit, titled “Daniel’s Story,” takes visitors through Daniel’s pre-war home in Germany, the room that his family lived in when they were forced to move into a ghetto, then, finally, the conditions that he was forced into when he was taken to a concentration camp. The exhibit was created to tell the story of the children of the Holocaust and memorialize the 1.5 million children who were killed by the Nazis.

According to Haimowitz, remembering what happened to the Jewish community as a result of the Holocaust is very crucial to preventing another occurrence.

“If we don’t remember it, people will be more willing to conform to someone like Hitler again,” she said. “If survivors don’t talk and tell people what really happened, and people don’t go to the Holocaust Museum and learn about the Holocaust, then another Holocaust could happen.”