Holocaust Museum

The Saturday before Thanksgiving Adrian, Lauren, and I had the opportunity to go to the Holocaust Museum with Adrian’s History Club. I had never been to this one so I was pretty excited to go. We all drove separate and then a docent was there to give us a tour. To be honest, I would have preferred to explore the museum on my own so I could have time to read everything and see all the pictures, but the students seemed to enjoy the tour. I definitely want to go back.

Rail car that carried prisoners

This boat saved thousands of Danish lives by smuggling them out of the country. They could only take like 8 people at a time because that’s all that would fit hidden below the deck.

After our tour we had the opportunity to meet a survivor. His name was Zoly and he was from Romania. He told Adrian the story of how he survived the Holocaust:

When he was about 14 they stopped allowing Jews to go to school (not even Jewish-only schools). Side note: he kept telling all the students to stay in school…no wonder! He went out and found a job. He found a job at a hotel as an elevator operator. It turns out that hotel was where all the German officials were staying while planning the takeover of Romania. They were all plain-clothed though so Zoly didn’t know it. Zoly was green-eyed and blonde though so the Germans didn’t recognize him as a Jew (kind of goes against so many of their theories but whatever). One official asked him to take him around the town and help him get familiar with it. Zoly spoke perfect German so the official actually thought he was German. Eventually that hotel became the official headquarters for the Holocaust in Romania. The German official told the other officials that Zoly was a German citizen and he was given a paper stating so. One night the Germans went around rounding up all the Jews and shipped them off to work and death camps. Zoly put that paper on his door so the Germans skipped over it and Zoly and all his immediate family were spared.

Isn’t that amazing? He had other stories but Adrian mostly heard them (I had to sit down a lot).