Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone was full of life as she
shared her story in front of a crowd of students and faculty.
Firestone, a former faculty member at UCLA, is one of the five
survivors whose stories were told in the 1999 Academy Award-winning
documentary, “The Final Days.” The movie was directed
by Steven Spielberg after he made “Schindler’s
List.”
“The movie was very graphic and I was taken back by the
distortion and the way we can treat each other,” said Jessica
Arterburn, a second-year communication studies student.
The movie was screened on Tuesday in the Grand Horizon room in
Covel Commons and was followed by a question and answer session
where students got a chance to speak with Firestone about her
experiences.
Firestone was 14 years old in 1938 when her home country of
Czechoslovakia was invaded by Hungary.
Firestone was first affected by the Holocaust when her brother
was taken to a labor camp. Later, she and her sister were also
taken away and her sister was executed. Her brother eventually ran
away from his camp.
Firestone was finally liberated by a Jewish Russian officer
after the war ended, but never heard from her parents ““ they
were killed in a labor camp.
“I think that my youth was my strength and I never lost
faith in God or blamed God,” Firestone said. “We had
very little to do with our survival, it was mostly luck that my
sister was chosen and I wasn’t.”
A few years ago, Firestone was invited to Berlin to take part in
a dialogue between survivors and their children with ex-Nazis and
their children.
“That experience made me understand that we are all very
vulnerable to do things under certain circumstances that we could
never do otherwise,” Firestone said. “The people
involved now feel differently about their actions.”
The event on Tuesday was organized by Maya Oren, a third-year
political science student and social chair for Hitch Suites.
“Three years ago I spent a week in Poland as a part of a
program called March of Living,” Oren said. “Since
then, I wanted to educate people.”
The funding for this event came from a combination of sources.
Hitch Suites, Office of Residential Life, On Campus Housing
Council, and Hillel all made contributions in order to make this
event come together.
“I am very supportive of this program since my
wife’s first mother-in-law was a survivor,” said Tom
Wheatley, professor in the theater, film and television department,
who attended the program.
Firestone is also involved in the Shoah foundation, an
organization interested in working with teachers internationally in
an attempt to promote education about the Holocaust by showing
films such as “The Final Days.”
“This is an ongoing project and Steven (Spielberg) will
continue doing this as long as he can,” said Firestone.
So far there are five film documentaries that have become part
of the program.
These films were compiled from 52,000 video testimonies gathered
in 57 countries. The testimonies are in 37 different languages
because of the diversity in the army generals, rescuers and
survivors who were willing to speak about their tragedies.
“Even though it wasn’t totally forgotten, it took us
20-30 years to be able to talk about it,” Firestone said.
“This is the closest thing we can get to reality (of the
Holocaust), so we should take it and apply it to our own
life,” Arterburn said.
Firestone ended the evening by emphasizing that education
without humanity is not enough to prevent history from being
repeated.