Rahway High School class meets with a Holocaust survivor through technology

Suburban News By Suburban News Suburban News
on March 25, 2012 at 10:47 AM
Pix-0328SkypesHolocaust.jpgStudents in the Rahway High School Holocaust-Genocide class interact with Holocaust Survivor Peter Feigl, who wrote diaries of his experiences.
RAHWAY On Monday, March 5, Rahway High School’s Holocaust-Genocide Studies class was privileged to be able to communicate personally and question Holocaust Survivor Peter Feigl from their classroom by using Skype. It was a wonderful experience for all the students and teachers who attended this rare one-on-one informal discussion about his life. He spoke candidly and eloquently to the students.

Skype is a free Microsoft computer application that allows people to communicate with voice and video. This technology is a helpful tool to expand students’ knowledge and experience.

The Rahway students learned that Peter Feigl was born on March 1,1929 in Berlin Germany to a secular Jewish family. In 1927, sensing imminent danger of the Nazi take over, Peter’s parents baptized him as a Catholic, hoping to protect him from the Nazi’s. This proved not to be the case since he was still considered Jewish.

Peter was separated from his parents at age eleven, which was a pivotal point in which he began his first diary written for his parents. He endured being sent to a concentration camp Gur in France and other trials and tribulations. He credits his survival to many righteous individuals who helped him to hide. He suspected that his parents had not survived, which was confirmed years later when he discovered a book that listed the convoys of French Jews who were deported. He saw his parents names listed on a convoy which went to Auchwitz-Birkenau.

Peter was ‘reunited’ with his first diary after 40 years when a movie was made about the French Jews. Someone had purchased his original diary from a flea market. He had to purchase his own diary back from the present owner who ‘assumed’ Peter had not survived. He continued with a second diary, both of which he donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, and whose excerpts may be found in the award winning book, Salvaged Pages, by Alexandra Zapruder.