Today we were honored to have Larry Gross Skype in from the West Coast to share his family's stories from the Holocaust. Larry's mom was a survivor from the Auschwitz death camp who had come face to face with the "angel of death", Dr. Mengele, and who had survived a malfunction in the gas chamber. Larry has shared this story with many of our students over the years.
The students will be going to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum on Wednesday. Larry continues his mom's work of keeping the memory of this horrific period alive and reaffirming the struggle for justice. His poignant retelling of the story including his own journey back to the site of this crime against his family and humanity.
Following Larry's presentation, one of the students, Vernon, wrote the following:
"I thought the conversation with Larry Gross was extremely powerful. Hearing his mother 's story was both inspiring and heartbreaking, I say inspiring because she never lost her voice through all of this, even though she did say in the paper she wrote, that at times she wanted to give up, but she never did. Instead she had the courage to raise awareness to educate people on how evil people can be and she really believed in 'never again.' This is the second time I've heard the story and it still makes me heavy hearted and it is really horrific to think humans are capable of doing that to others."
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