|
Holocaust Survivor Visits Ridgeway Elementary
 |
| Fred Spiegel speaks to Ridgeway Elementary fifth graders about his experiences. |
|
MANCHESTER TOWNSHIP - Fifth grade may seem a bit young to study the horrors of the Holocaust, but Fred Spiegel was nearly the same age as the Ridgeway Elementary students he spoke to when he himself experienced those horrors.
Teacher Ms. Barbara Ambler invited Speigel to speak to her students after they spent three weeks studying the Holocaust and discussing the issues that surround it, like prejudice, harassment and the idea that those who stood by and let it happen might be just as guilty as those who actively participated.
Spiegel, who is 75 years old and now lives in Howell, described how the Holocaust started with small signs of discrimination against Jews, increasing slowly at first and then exploding on Kristallnacht, when the German Nazis raided the homes of Jews throughout their territories. It was November of 1938 and Spiegel was only about 6 years old at the time. He said he didn't understand what was going on when he saw the synagogue on fire and all the Jewish homes vandalized and looted.
"They smashed everything," he said.
Shortly after Kristallnacht, Speigel was sent to live with his uncle in Holland, where his parents thought he would be safe from the Nazis.
"But German soldiers attacked Holland and they surrendered," he explained. "They dismissed the Jewish teachers and civil servants, there was no shopping for us in non-Jewish stores, no bicycles, no sports events, no movies, we were banned," he said.
Eventually, all Jews had to wear a Jewish star on their clothing and the Nazis began rounding them up at night and sending them away.
"There were less children in school every week," he said. "Many people went into hiding and it was very dangerous for the people who hid you."
In 1941, when Hitler ordered that Holland be cleansed of Jews, Speigel and his sister were sent to a labor camp in East Amsterdam and were eventually taken by train to the Westerbork transit camp in the Netherlands.
"Every week, trains went to Poland, to the death camps, and we lived in fear that we would be next," he said. When he was finally chosen to board the train, he said he began to scream as he was being pushed aboard and a guard gave an order to have him taken off. "I don't know why he did it, but if I hadn't made such a commotion, I would be dead," said Spiegel.
Spiegel was safe in Westerbork for awhile after his uncle convinced the guards that his nephew and niece were British by showing a letter from their mother, who had fled to England. Near the end of the war, they were sent to an exchange camp in Germany where Spiegel described deplorable conditions with little water, infestations of lice, rotten food and with many suffering and dying from hunger, typhus or other sicknesses.
Finally, everyone in the camp was put on a train for six days as the German armies suffered defeat and the guards and engineer abandoned the train. American soldiers found the train and they were liberated. "It was Friday, April 13, 1945, just before my 13th birthday," Spiegel recalled.
Spiegel wrote a book about his experiences, titled "Once the Acacias Bloomed: Memories of a Childhood Lost," and plans to continue to share his story with others as long as he lives. "People have to know that they can never again stand by and let such a terrible thing happen again."
| 
)