Students at Adair County Middle School got a rare opportunity to speak with a Holocaust survivor. Esther Starobin called in via Zoom last Tuesday with the support of Washington DC’s Holocaust Memorial Museum to answer questions and to talk about the impact that the Holocaust had on her life.
Starobin was born in Germany in 1937. Esther’s father was a World War I veteran who lost his leg while serving and made his living selling supplies for farmers. She lived with per parents and her siblings in Germany until “Kristallnacht,” or the Night of Broken Glass, showed that it was no longer safe for Jews. Kristallnacht was a progrom carried out against the Jewish community in November of 1938.
In 1939, Esther was able to make it out of Germany through a Kindertransport. Kindertransport refers to rescue efforts orchestrated by Jewish organizations inside the Greater German Reich to smuggle refugee children out of Nazi Germany starting in December of 1938. Over the next year and a half, Kindertransport efforts transported roughly 10,000 children to Britain. There, she lived with an English family who took care of her as the Blitz was carried out.
“I was very happy there (but) the war started in September. We carried a gas mask. We had a bomb shelter,” Starobin said.
After the war, she was relocated to Washington, DC, where she eventually reconnected with her siblings, who had also made it out via Kindertransport. Her parents, however, faced a different fate. “My parents went from Gurs (a concentration camp)... to Drancy, the transit camp to Auschwitz. They arrived in Auschwitz on August 14, 1942, and they were murdered upon their arrival.”
In response to a question from a student about how she has dealt with the trauma of the Holocaust, Starobin said, “I’m really good at putting things in a box and separating different parts of my life. And I think you can either let Hitler win and make your life totally miserable, not function, or you can get on with your life… Everybody has things that happen. Luckily most people don’t have things (like the Holocaust), but I think you have choices whether to let it take over your life or to let your life take over.”
The conversation with Starobin was arranged by teacher Crystal Huckaby, whose class has spent the last few weeks learning about the Holocaust and reading Anne Frank’s “Diary of a Young Girl.” Frank famously spent much of her short life in a sequestered attic hiding from the Nazis before they found her family. Frank died at age 15 in a concentration camp, one of around 6 million Jews who were killed in the genocide.
Given how young she was when she wrote her diary, Frank is often relatable to younger readers who may otherwise see history as simply dates, facts, and numbers. Huckaby said her students were surprised that pictures of Frank showed her as smiling and “goofy, a little bit” because she was so much like themselves.
“Even though she was… surrounded by the fear of the police and the Nazis, she was happy,” said student Khyron Matney.
By reading Frank—and, of course, talking to Starobin—history becomes something that not only happened but continues to affect those who lived through it.
“I’m so proud of the work my kids have put in and the attention and the care that they have put in. I think they are important lessons to learn so history does not repeat itself,” Huckaby said.
By Kenley Godby
kenley@adairvoice.com
