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Holocaust survivor tells story of bravery and survival

By Josh Yates '14

“I’m a Jew, and I’m a survivor of the Holocaust.” These were the opening words from Helen Sperling, a Polish Jew who delivered a public lecture at Hamilton Monday May, 5 which also happened to be Israeli Independence Day. Sponsored by Hamilton’s Hillel, Sperling’s talk brought over 100 students and faculty to the Chapel, filling almost every seat available. She has spoken at Hamilton numerous times before, and each time her story and her presence at Hamilton has represented a unique and important opportunity for a kind of oral history few have the chance to witness.

Despite the two-hour length of the event, Sperling kept her audience engaged and helped create a wonderfully intimate environment for her audience. She began her story with some general biographical information—she was born in Poland and lived in a small town 20 miles from the city of Warsaw, the Polish capital. She described her town as “very close,” explaining, “Everybody knew everybody.” Sperling spoke of her life positively before Hitler came to power in the early 1930s, admitting that she was very spoiled growing up, which the audience found quite humorous. She remembered vacations she took with her family and the few times her father would go into Warsaw to bring back her favorite dessert, creampuffs. She clearly expressed her fondness for those days in the tone of her voice and the expression on her face.

However, once Hitler came to power in Germany, she said everything changed. Even though she and her family had been living in Poland, Hitler’s open antipathy for Jews and his desire to force German Jews out of Germany soon became the only topic of conversation in her house.

One thing she emphasized and vividly remembers was her parents’ denial that Hitler’s actions in Germany foreshadowed future repercussions for Poland. When speaking about this, she shook her head, remarking how “stupid” everyone was in her town, including her parents, for believing such an idea.

Shortly thereafter, Ms. Sperling’s pleasant biography turned into a story raw with emotion, fear, death and loss. She gave a detailed account of how, when the Nazis entered her town, she and other Jews were forced to leave their homes and live in a small, segregated area called a ghetto. Some people, she said, had died from the overcrowding, sickness and disease that came to characterize the ghetto. Despite this, however, she said living in the ghetto was bearable compared to her time in the concentration camps. Her discussion of her time in two concentration camps, Ravensbruck and Buchenwald, was without a doubt the most painful part to hear. She spoke of how she was separated from her family and how they were murdered in the gas chambers, of the awful smell of burning flesh she could smell from the crematoriums where the Nazis burned the body and how she felt as if she had been trained to become a slave. Except for a few sporadic gasps, the entire Chapel fell silent during this part of Sperling’s talk, mesmerized and shocked at the detailed account of her experience.

Sperling, however, ended her talk on a positive note. She spoke of her survival, how she immigrated to America, fell in love with another survivor from the Holocaust, married him, and moved to Waterbury, CT. She adopted two children and was lucky enough to become a mother, then also a grandmother.

After living in America for a number of years, she soon dedicated her life to traveling around the country and telling people about her story so that people would always remember not only what the Holocaust was but also how cruel humanity is capable of becoming, and how the rest of the world needs to not be a bystander and act when prejudice is practiced. Despite the difficult nature of her story, Ms. Sperling’s charm and wit, especially for someone who is 94 years old, made her story real and surprisingly relatable for the audience. Those in attendance were left those in attendance with a history lesson only a Holocaust survivor could tell.

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