On Wednesday, November 16, a Holocaust survivor named Eva Meisels shared her testimony with the Grade 6’s in a Zoom assembly. Mrs. Meisels was born in Budapest, Hungary, in 1939, and was forced into the Budapest Ghetto with her mother and other family members until Liberation in 1945. She emigrated to Montreal with her parents after the war.
Some Grade 6 students met at recess time to share their reflections about Mrs. Meisel’s testimony.
Evie Dennis:
A part of her experience that stuck out to me was when Eva’s mom took off her yellow star and sent her to go and get bread. She was only three in a half when her mom did that. This was so dangerous because if someone noticed that she was Jewish she would have been shot and so would the person that gave her the bread.
Lexi Schipper:
Eva’s mom decided not to send Eva away to a safer place, in the western part of Hungary with her grandparents. Luckily, her mom chose not to send her because she found out later that Nazis invaded the west, and if her mother had done that, Eva would have been sent to a concentration camp with her grandparents.
Nathan Kawaguchi:
Reuniting with her father was a thing that I will always remember, because I have such a good relationship with my dad. After Liberation she was outside her apartment with her great aunt. Then a strange man was running toward her with tears running down his face. He picked her up and hugged her. She found out then that the strange man was her father, and she didn’t recognize him because she was so young when he was sent to a forced labour camp.
