EASTHAMPTON — While reading excerpts from textbooks, memorizing pivotal dates and answering essay-style questions can provide some understanding to key historical moments in time, there’s nothing quite like hearing about it from someone who’d actually lived through it.

That certainly was the case for roughly 60 seventh- and eighth-grade students at Hilltown Cooperative Charter Public School, who heard from 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Henia “Henny” Lewin last Thursday.

“It’s surreal,” said a wide-eyed Naia Close. “I am in the same room and listening to the person, who survived all of these insanely horrific events. … It’s just wild.”

This semester, Close and his classmates have been learning about the Holocaust, starting from the end of World War I and the advent of the Weimar Republic, to the rise of Nazi Germany in 1933. As part of the curriculum, there’s a focus on understanding how seemingly reasonable people can be influenced to stand by or participate in racial injustice and mass murder.

For the past few years, their social studies teacher, Beth Adel, has invited Lewin to share her story of survival. Adel said she uses a curriculum from Facing History and Ourselves, which empowers students to think critically about history and understand the impact of their choices.

“Studying the Holocaust can seem so distant and it can seem like it was just a world away that doesn’t relate to our own lives sometimes. And Henny is such a compelling reminder that the Holocaust affects those in our own community, our own families, our own loved ones, and our neighbors, and are living with the devastating effects,” said Adel.

During her presentation, Lewin, nee Wisgardisky, showed a map of Lithuania and identified the south-central city of Kaunas, where her father and mother, Gita and Jonas Wisgardisky, lived. She showed a photo following her parents’ wedding with lots of people in it and pointed to aunts and uncles and other kin.

“From this entire gathering, only nine people survived,” Lewin said and was responded with a round of gasps.

Lewin, who was born in January 1940, recalled the story her parents told her of when the Nazis invaded in June 1941, forcing them to move into the Kovno Ghetto. As part of that move, 40,000 Jewish people were crammed into the “slums,” in a space that would have probably been better suited for 6,000 people, she said.

Three days after the ghetto was sealed on Aug. 15, soldiers came asking for 500 volunteers — men who spoke various languages — to help translate and write letters for German authorities, she said. Lewin’s uncle on her father’s side was among the 526 who volunteered.

However, that arrangement turned out to be a lie and all 526 were shot and killed.

“Out of the 40,000 that had entered the ghetto in the first place, only 2,000 of us survived. And the 2,000 of us that’s 5% to 2,000 of us that survived is not because of the kindness of the Nazi is because most of us managed to escape from the ghetto one way or another,” she said.

Survival by suitcase

While living in the ghetto, Lewin’s father constructed a fake wall between the first floor and second floor, to hide her and her cousin, Shoshana (Berk) Sarid.

However, Lewin’s mother got word that in another ghetto, children were rounded up for what they were told was immunizations.

“But that was a lie. They never saw those children again,” she said. “So my mother decided to smuggle me out.”

Gita Wisgardisky found medicine to sedate Lewin, who was 3½ years old at the time, and they put her into a suitcase. Lewin was smuggled out of the ghetto and went to live with Jonas and Joana Stankevicz and their two daughters on a farm in Lithuania. To keep up the false pretenses, one of the stories that was told why the Stankevicz’s had another child show up was that she was the “illegitimate child” of a relative from another farm. Another story told was that Lewin was an “abandoned Russian child” who was left behind when the soldiers went to war.

Though neither story was true, Jonas and Joana Stankevicz kept Lewin safe for about two years.

Gita Wisgardisky also helped Lewin’s cousin Shoshana who was also smuggled out of the ghetto, but ended up on another farm.

After the war, Lewin was reunited with her parents as well as Shoshana, who her parents took in as their own as they feared her mother had also died. Miraculously, in 1947, the doorbell rang at Lewin’s house and Shoshana’s mother appeared at the door.

An impactful presentation

The presentation was one that hit differently for students like 13-year-old Norman Thorsen-Vera, who admittedly choked back tears from Lewin’s story.

“I’m really grateful for her talking to us about this because it was really hard for her and it’s really brave to step up and speak about it, even if it brings you pain and such feelings,” he said.

Fourteen-year-old Aria Simonelli said she was especially grateful for the opportunity to hear Lewin’s words as she is likely one of the last generations to hear such stories firsthand.

“Ten years from now, this will be but a memory,” she said. “It’s something I’ll always remember.”

For Lewin, sharing her story has been a bit of a mission for her.

“I hope I have an impact. I want to connect with them and let them know how important it is to be an activist. If I can connect with just one, I feel like I’ve had an impact,” she said.

Emily Thurlow can be reached at ethurlow@gazettenet.com.]]>