Holocaust Survivor Brings History Alive For LCA Junior High Students

Holocaust survivor Andrew Steinberg shared his experience with junior high students at Lakewood Catholic Academy recently.

History can be abstract, particularly to the very young who look back at the amazing sweep of the 20th century.

Those in the “Baby Boom” generation were well-schooled in the horrors of the Holocaust, when more than 6 million Jews perished in Nazi Germany and its brutal system of concentration camps. For children who were born later, it is a much more distant event. The history of the Holocaust is certainly taught in school, but for junior high students at Lakewood Catholic Academy, history recently came to them in the form of Holocaust survivor Andrew Steinberg of Shaker Heights, who visited the school to relate his personal experience as a prisoner of the Nazis near the end of World War II.

Mr. Steinberg, more than 80 years old, was just 14 when he became one of 3,000 Jews rounded up in a Hungarian village in 1944 and transported in a cattle wagon along with his parents and grandparents, arriving at Auschwitz on May 4th. The 7th and 8th graders were spellbound listening as he described the degrading treatment he received at the hands of his captors. 

Mr. Steinberg told his story in a quietly reflective manner. He recalled being “disinfected” with a large group of fellow captives, and given the striped prison clothes he would wear until his release. As a strong young boy, he was kept alive to work for the Nazis, though he slowly lost strength trying to subsist on a diet of just 800 calories a day.  

He believes strongly that it is important to tell his story to all who will listen. “I feel it is my duty,” he explains.  “I think about the fact that I am here, and so many are gone – fellow Jews, the soldiers who fought to liberate us. It’s important to tell the story to the world. It’s not just a Jewish story – it’s a human story.” 

Asked by the students in a question-and-answer session after he spoke if he felt hatred toward the Germans, Steinberg demurred. “I do not hate the German people,” he explained. “There is nothing to be gained from hatred. I do detest the behavior of criminals of all sorts, but my experience taught me tolerance.”

His experience also taught a substantial lesson to the 130 young people who heard his story that day – one that they won’t soon forget.