St. Maximilian Kolbe student Samantha Franko shared her message of remembering the lives and stories of Holocaust survivors with students, teachers and special guests at the symposium:
This summer I had the opportunity to meet some very inspiring people who have forever influenced the course of my life. Prior to leaving for Poland, each of us were given a letter from a survivor to take to Auschwitz. The letters were intended to give us an idea of what the survivors went through during the Holocaust. They told about how their humanity was stripped away day by day and by the time they were being herded like animals inot the airless cattle cars, they thought they were going some place where life could only get better. Few suspected they were going to their death. Many just didn't make the journey to Auschwitz. Those who did make it watched as their family members were "selected" to go directly to the gas chambers. Imagine being our age and torn from your family and left to survive this hell ... alone. The life expectancy at Aschwitz-Birkenau was an hour and a half. Most entered through the gates but never got the chance to walk back through them to freedom.
Before we stepped through the gates at Auschwitz, the group got together and said a prayer written by Max Eisen, a survivor. It wasn't till Auschwitz-Birkenau that we got the chance to open our letters. We had chose to read our letters on the selection platform, where our survivors once stood 65 years before. Already this was starting to become overwhelming. When it was time, I took my letter and went to sit far from everyone. When I sat down I was facing the women's barracks, but then I turned to have my back to the group and I was facing the entrance. Reading this letter was probably the hardest moment of the trip so I chose to sit apart from everyone else. I didn't want to hear other voices, I didn't want to hear their papers making the noise paper makes. I wanted silence and the whole time I was reading the letter, I was in my own world, my own space, my own bubble, and no one could disturb me. The envelope contained a letter by Amek Adler and three pictures. as I read my letter, I realized Amek chose not to belabour the details of his ordeal, but his words were powerful enough to make my insides crumple and I felt myself feeling the urge to cry in a way I have never felt the need to cry before. I read it over and over, probably at least 7 times more, each time a new piece of the letter clicking into my brain. There was so much to take in, I had to take it in one bit at a time. When I met Amek in person, he told me that he saved the details of his story to share with me face-to-face. The letters were a great gift to us because the survivors had to relive the experience and pain of the Holocaust to write their stories down for us.
The letters my group and I received are very precious and actually getting to meet our survivors and talk to them one-on-one has made us witnesses to the Holocaust. No one is on Earth forever and sadly, the Holocaust survivors will eventually leave us. That's why it's up to our generation to pick up the torch that they have passed down to us and to help them to forever keep it lit, just like their stories.
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