Holocast survivor talks to school students

December 10, 2008|By KENDALL TROWBRIDGE, Meyersdale

The Holocaust was a tragic event in the history of the world and should never be forgotten and the Meyersdale senior class had the opportunity to hear an account of this horrific event.

The class traveled to the University of Pittsburgh at Johnstown to hear Marion Blumenthal Lazan, Holocaust and the author of Four Perfect Pebbles, on Nov. 11.

Living above her father’s shoe shop near Bremen, Germany, Lazan was four years old when her parents received the documents that allowed the family to leave the country, she explained.

The Blumenthals were sent first to a staging camp in Holland. On Nov. 12, 1938, “Kristalnacht,” the Nazis broke windows in Jewish stores and the German government fined the Jews for the damage. The Jews were forced to sell their businesses.


At the camp in Holland, Lazan’s parents were assigned to take care of children whose parents had been killed. One month before the family had planned to emigrate, the Germans invaded Holland and in December 1939, the Blumenthals were deported to a concentration camp. Lazan and the other children welcomed the change of environment and na•vely looked forward to what, they thought, would be a better place, she recalled.

They were transported to the heart of Germany. According to Lazan, it was a pitch black, cold, rainy night when they arrived at Bergen-Belsen. There were dogs and guards waiting for the prisoners.

“To this day, I still feel threatened when I see a German Shepard,” she said.

The Jews were sent to the Star Camp, where all Jews were forced to wear a yellow star. Six-hundred people were crammed into barracks that were originally meant for only 100.

“In the barracks, we were given one thin bunk which was a plank of wood. There were two people assigned to each bunk,” Lazan explained, “We were lucky because my mother and I shared a bunk and my brother and father shared a bunk.”

Toilets in the concentration camp were long wooden benches with holes in them. There was no water or soap; it was not a sanitary environment.

Every morning, Lazan and the other prisoners were made to line up five in a row to be counted. They stood until every prisoner was counted, which sometimes lasted from sunup to sundown, without food, drink, or protective covering from the weather. According to Lazan, in order to protect their toes and hands, they used their urine to stay warm. There was a constant foul odor and the haunting fear of death lingered in the camp. According to Lazan, their clothes and bodies were infected with lice.

“Squashing the lice on my body became a pastime of mine,” Lazan stated.

In order to keep herself going, Lazan invented a game. She tried to find four pebbles of the same size and same shape. Each pebble would represent each one of her family members, including herself. If she found all four pebbles, that meant all four of them survived.

“I sometimes cheated at this,” she said. “I sometimes couldn’t find a pebble; but when I would think about it, I knew exactly where to look.”

Lazan described her mother as being very strong. Without her, Lazan said, she wouldn’t have made it. One day, her mother somehow managed to get potatoes and a can. She used wood from the bunks to make a fire and she made soup for them. German guards came in for a surprise roll-call. As they tried to hide the soup, the scalding contents spilled on ten-year-old Lazan.

“If I had cried out, I would have cost the rest of the prisoners their lives,” she stated.

By April 1945 as the Allies closed in on Germany, the prisoners of Bergen-Belsen were herded on a train headed to one of the “death camps” in the east.

What should have been a 10-hour trip stretched to two weeks as the Nazis kept changing the train’s direction to avoid capture by the Russians. Lazan and the prisoners had been without food, water, or medical supplies for two weeks. It was hard to keep infection and lice from her still wounded leg.

Shortly after, the Russian army came and liberated the train, and the prisoners were taken to a farm. Here they had food, water, etc. Unfortunately, their bodies could not tolerate the proper nourishment, and they became sick.

“At 10 years old, I weighed 35 pounds and my mother, at 37 years old, weighed 60 pounds,” Lazan said.

All of the prisoners’ heads were shaved in order to rid of head lice.

“It was a wonderful, rushing feeling of being free at long last!.” she added.

Lazan and her brother, Albert, were placed in a child’s home to recuperate, where she felt like a misfit. Neither knew how to shop, or even use money. On April 23, 1948, the family arrived in New Jersey. Sadly, her father, who had survived Bergen-Belsen, died of typhus two months after liberation.

At age 13, Lazan was placed in fourth grade to learn English. With a lot of hard work, studying, and attending summer school, she was able to graduate at age 18 from Peoria Central High School in Illinois, ranking eighth in a class of 267.

Lazan has spoken to more than two million people in the last 20 years. She wants the new generation to be taught and she wants to keep the past from happening again.

“When the survivors are gone, you are the ones that can pass it on and keep the Holocaust from happening again,” she said.

Lazan stressed that we must all have respect for each other regardless of skin color, religion, etc.

“We must respect each other’s differences,” she said. Lazan stated, “Never generalize an entire group because of the actions of a few within the group. I hope you prevent our past from becoming your future.”

(Drop Kelley Crouse a line at

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