My Survivor

- Someone said it to me the other day when I told them I was doing this, "You're the last generation that's going to hear "these stories firsthand."

You know, and that really hit me.

- My sister's son.

- Yeah.

There won't be any more living evidence that this happened and that's a little scary and definitely sad.

- I wonder now what's gonna happen next.

What's gonna after after we, the survivors, are gone?

- Unfortunately, one day we're never gonna have firsthand survivors.

All we will have are second-hand, third hand, fourth-hand accounts.

- How are you?

- So today I wanna thank you Mrs. Bader that within a one-year period you touched my life forever.

(audience applauding) - I was in Auschwitz.

I never forget that.

I dream with it and I sleep with that, all my life.

- It was among the most remarkable experiences that a university student could have, that they could have access to and establish such an intimate relationship with a Holocaust survivor over such an extended period of time.

- We were through hell, you know.

Sometimes, when I talk about this, it's like I'm not talking about myself.

Once we overcame all that, we managed to have a life.

- There will be an end to hearing those stories from their lips, but just because the people who tell the stories firsthand will not live forever, that doesn't mean that the stories can't.

(gentle music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by Elizabeth G. Frank and family, in memory of Stephen Frank, beloved father, husband and brother.

Additional major funding was generously provided by the Gelvan Family Philanthropic Fund, Kent Services, the Five Millers Family Foundation, the Braman Family Foundation, Marita and George Feldenkreis, Leslie Miller Saiontz.

This film has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.

A full list of funders can be found at APTonline.org (inspirational music) It started with a handful of University of Miami students, thinking about a world without Holocaust survivors.

(inspirational music) For an entire academic year, students and survivors, young and old, were paired together, as part of a landmark educational program.

11 years later, nearly 500 young people became outspoken voices against Holocaust denial and hate.

All became witnesses to history.

- Hi, then, hi.

- Hi.

Oh, it's so good to see you.

- She helped me a lot.

I help her, and she helped me.

She's a wonderful girl, very, very good heart.

- The human experience of it is not something that you get from a history book.

You see the statistics, you see six million people dead.

- This is my family here.

- Mm.

- Edgar.

- Wow.

But it doesn't really hit you until there's someone in front of you telling you exactly what they experienced, and this is what I went through, and this person in front of you, that you just can't believe survived all that.

(inspirational music) - [Narrator] In the early days of the program, about 160,000 victims of the Holocaust, the Nazi genocide against the Jews, were living in the United States.

(inspirational music) By the time you see this, less than 67,000 will still be alive.

As the last generation vanishes, humanity is confronted by a haunting question.

Who will tell their stories when the last survivor is gone?

(metallic clanging) (gentle music) - The Holocaust happened because the people realized, nobody speaks up, nobody cares.

Quietness created the Holocaust.

- It's when you're talking to a survivor, and you see, you know, you see it in their faces what they've been through.

- How can I forget my mother, who I saw taken to the gas chamber?

My father, who was worked to death, they kept on beating him, how can I forget that?

- He never gave up, even when he was at his weakest, starving, sick, they kept fighting for their lives.

You see the emotion when they talk about their family and the last time they saw them, and that's when it becomes real.

(tense music) - Hopelessness, loss, you know, man's capacity for evil.

You don't want to see evidence and proof of those things, and how they affect the lives of people you care about, but they are true.

- I wonder now what's gonna happen next.

What's gonna happen after we, the survivors are gone?

- Unfortunately, one day, we're never gonna have first-hand survivors.

All we will have are second-hand, third-hand, fourth-hand accounts.

- Ah, when you were there, it was horrible, the children, how they were crying.

- [Jasper] When we went to the Holocaust Memorial, she was overwhelmed with emotion, and I know that she was thinking about the things she didn't wanna tell anyone.

- You see, the future is no longer us.

The future is the second generation and the third generation.

- History does repeat itself.

History repeats itself when people forget their history, and so, the reason why I'm a teacher is in the hopes that it won't happen again.

We can stand up to injustice.

(gentle music) - And there was definitely some nights that I remember driving home, and I had to pull over, 'cause I was in tears, you know, I was upset that this woman had to go through this.

You know, no one should ever have to go through something like that.

- I was in Auschwitz.

I never forget that, I dream with that and I sleep with that all my life.

I cannot forget it, never, never.

I remember, I found out the same night that they burned down my parents, and you see, only I survived.

Nobody should know what people can go through in life.

- It actually started with a phone call to me from an old friend, the former Secretary of State, Larry Eagleburger.

He said, "I have some resources that are part "of a settlement.

"Are you interested in a program that would involve "students and Holocaust survivors?"

- And that's where-- - That's why-- - Wow.

I mean, I just thought it was an incredible opportunity.

It seemed to us that Miami was a perfect place to connect Holocaust survivors, in some way, to students, connecting them with people, frankly, that are getting very old, and were very close to the end of their lives, but who had a story to tell, which none of us ever wanted to forget.

- He and I have an album with everything.

- The individual stories of the survivors had a tremendous impact on the students who met them.

- Somehow, we transferred the experience from those who were there, to those who can now carry it forward.

- And that will never take it away for us.

- [Jasper] The responsibility to keep the memory of the Holocaust alive has now shifted, so when there are no more Holocaust survivors left, we'll be at a crossroads.

(birds chirping) - The internship had a lot of moving parts to it.

It was an academic program, it was a two-semester commitment.

They got full credit for it.

We had over 500 students that went through this program, and they knew that they were gonna be doing something pretty extraordinary.

- How are you?

- Hi.

- How are you, my dear?

- Nice to see you.

- After seven years!

- I know!

- How you been?

- Good.

- This young lady was in University of Miami as an undergraduate.

Since then, she went through law school, and now she's married, and it was very nice to have a reunion with her.

- Shall we go inside?

- Yeah.

- Come.

- Go inside.

- You look amazing.

- I know, as always.

As always.

Mrs. Bader and I met weekly in her apartment, I think sometimes more than that, actually.

She would always wait for me with a smile on her face, a tray on her coffee table with tea and cookies.

And she would talk to me about her children, her grandchildren, and of course, her experience in the Holocaust.

We developed a true friendship, one that I never would've imagined would've been built between a 20 year old at the time, and someone the age of my grandparents.

So today, I wanna thank you, Mrs. Bader, that within a one year period, you touched my life forever.

(inspirational music) (audience applauding) - Their life and their value system, by seeing that it's possible to have a life even after all this horrors.

When the law came, that we have, in 24 hours, vacate our house, we had to move into a ghetto with other families together, and we were in the ghetto for a couple of months, and then, another order came to vacate the ghetto, and march to a big, open space in the outskirts of the city, Munkacs, and it was already end of May, very, very hot, and we had to walk pretty fast, and one of my grandfathers, who was still alive, he was sort of in his 80s, and he couldn't walk fast.

He fell, and my mother tried to help him to get up, and the guards were walking along us with a rifle, and the German Shepherds, hit my mother with a rifle butt, and forced her to leave her father on the ground, and that's the last time I saw my grandfather.

It's not easy, it wasn't easy for me but you know, to go on, one has to make changes, and one has to sort of have some aims and help others and I think that helps, not everybody could get over, definitely, I knew people who had lots of trouble to adjusting to life after.

- No, no.

- Most of them had never met a Holocaust survivor.

Roughly half of the students were Jewish, half were not, and so, initially, there was tremendous anxiety on their parts, because it was, for them, it was like, in some ways, meeting a superstar, and very quickly, anxious students transitioned to a level of comfort with their survivor, and then, it went on to, in most cases, establishing really close relationships.

- No, she's coming tonight.

- Oh, really?

- To be with me in the hospital.

- Oh.

- Yeah, yeah.

- I'm a pre-med student, so my day was always math, and science and this was something that was really important to me, because my grandfather was a Holocaust survivor.

When I found out he passed away, it was so much more than just losing a family member.

It was losing a story, it was losing a history, it was losing all of these experiences firsthand, because there are people who deny the Holocaust, and then, if you meet my grandfather, and he tells you the story, just like Fred, as well, it's, oh, wow, you were there.

(somber music) - As the war was coming to an end, they didn't know what to do with us, so they put up those death marches.

So I was in a death march for 16 days in the biggest snowstorm.

We had, the only thing we had, those striped pajama outfits and they were cold, people were dying by the minute, and not only that.

We were being escorted by Hitler youth, the young Nazis, their sport was to kill Jews, and they were only waiting for somebody to be a straggler, to not be able to walk or to march, and they killed them right away, and they had fun, they were laughing.

The guy's still alive, he shoots him again.

We started out with about 100,000 people.

We didn't arrive to Bergen-Belsen, more than maybe 10, 15,000.

The rest of them died, and Bergen-Belsen, for itself was undescribable.

It was hell on Earth.

(somber music) This is the library.

- So Fred coming into my life reminded me of my grandfather.

There's something about him that I just, I feel like I know him.

- What is it, a book?

- iPad.

- Yeah, yeah, that's how I'm reading books.

- You're so hip with the times.

I don't even have an iPad.

For me, it was now it's my job.

As a younger generation, I've accepted that this is my role, my position to spread this knowledge to other people.

(gentle music) - So I grew up in Plano, Texas.

For me, I'm gonna be a 4th generation physician.

My family's composed of physicians, engineers, pharmacists.

My aunt actually does Chinese medicine, so the whole gambit of science.

Starting off in high school, the Holocaust is one of those things that we learned about, I got a book about the medical experiments in the Holocaust.

I read 10 pages, and it was tough to fall asleep that night.

So when I went to the University of Miami, this internship was brought up.

I was very much on this medical route, and Dr. Goldsmith was a psychologist, so it was a good pair.

We had decided to meet at his house, and I remember I drove over, and I was like, I think I was 15 or 20 minutes early, so I just sat in my car, I was like, I don't wanna throw him off, I really don't know who this person is, I was like 20 years old at that point, and I was starting to think, maybe I'm in over my head.

I'm going to talk to someone who's been in this, and I was so worried about saying something offensive or not asking the right question or being boring.

But I remember, I knocked on the door, and he's a smaller man, so at least that made me feel a little less intimidated.

(laughs) And he took me to his living room, and he's like, do you mind if I smoke?

I was like, no, by all means.

So he got his pipe and he started packing his pipe, and he was like, all right, what do you wanna talk about?

(inspirational music) (crowd chattering) - This is what college is about, to be able to learn from people who are different from you, learn from people who have experienced the world in a way that is irreplaceable, and so, I knew that that was something that I really wanted to have the opportunity to do.

Hi, how are you?

- And Helen brought her dad, Joe Sachs, who is the survivor I just started to tell you about.

He's gonna be speaking to the class.

- Here's his bio.

- Oh, okay, great.

- And there's some handouts you might wanna give the students.

- I just know it's going to be incredibly meaningful for them to hear your father.

As you guys may have noticed, we have a Holocaust survivor here with us today.

- My father Joe Sachs will tell you a little bit about the camps that he was in.

My mother survived Auschwitz.

- [Joe] Okay, stand down.

- Okay, you're on.

- I'm on.

(group laughing) People were starving, people were dying of cold and starvation.

That was the last I saw of my mom and my dad.

- Joe Sachs coming to my classroom to speak with my students was definitely an outgrowth of that internship experience.

It's a very different experience in the sense that, with my survivor, I met with him once a week for an entire year, so that relationship is very intimate.

My students were able to hear from Joe Sachs for an hour in their class period one time, but it hugely impacted them, and they continue to talk about it to this day, because I still have those students.

- Over the years, I was able to hold onto life until they liberated us.

We were liberated physically, but the mental, the psychological problems stay with you for the rest of your life.

(somber music) When I came to a camp, and I was put in front of the barrio capo, he held a little speech to us.

It was a group of prisoners, and so, he held a whip in one hand, and a club in the other, and says, "This is going to be life over here," and he hits one of the prisoners with the club.

And he died on the spot.

And he says, "Yes, that's going to be life from here on in."

And that has a lot, that has a lot to do with the injury inside, which is something that will never go away.

(somber music) - Every single one of them said, "I'm going to remember that there was a Holocaust survivor "who came to speak to me, and I'm going to always feel "like I have a personal experience with the Holocaust "in a way that I never did before."

That was my job.

If they don't remember a single thing I said, but they remember Joe Sachs coming to my classroom, that's enough.

(students applauding) - My speeches end with one thing.

If you want a better world for yourself and for your children, listen carefully at what happened in this world not long ago.

(inspirational music) (somber music) - It's incredibly evident in speaking to a survivor, and hearing their stories.

By Elie Wiesel.

And reading "Night" and reading anything where you have this tremendous proof, this undeniable proof of it happening, and that it was real, and you know, those stories need to be told, and they cannot be denied that they are truth.

(somber music) - From a historical point of view, this genocide as different from other genocides.

Look, Stalin, at the same time, murdered millions, starved millions.

We've seen, in more contemporary times, genocide in Rwanda.

We don't even know the exact number, but in the space of a month, a month and a half, hundreds of thousands murdered.

Cambodia.

But there are things that are unique about the Holocaust that deserve our attention.

This is the only time in human history that a country went out after a group of people, not just within their borders, (tense music) and not just in places where they might have attacked them, but from one end of a continent to another and beyond.

(tense music) And it wasn't just, let's go after those people who might be dangerous.

People were wheeled to the trains in wheelchairs and on gurneys.

The scope of it, the scope of the victim, makes this a different kind of genocide.

(train clacking) And it happened in the 20th century, the 20th century, which is supposedly modernity and advancement, and the leaders of it were, by and large, well-educated people.

(eerie music) The mobile killing units, responsible for murdering between a million and a million and a half Jews on the Eastern Front, Einsatzgruppen, they were led by people with Ph.Ds.

One had a Ph.D in law, one was a minister.

It's sort of a commentary, 'cause here, we're talking about a program within an educational context.

I've devoted my entire life to teaching.

And we always think that, if you educate someone, you can turn them into a decent human being.

Not true.

(somber music) - It's a story of our leaders not standing up when they knew something terrible was happening, and it's a story of a remarkable group of people that wanted to make sure the world never forgot.

(somber music) And for me, because I'm not Jewish, I'm, in fact, Arab-American, it is a searing experience every time I hear about it.

(tense music) - As a Hindu, I don't know, I guess I was taught early in Sunday school and by my parents, and the Swamis that I've learned that every person's good, and at some point, when you look at the Holocaust, it's tough to think that the people who are calling the shots were inherently good.

I think this transcends religion.

I think it comes down to ignorance and ignorant hate.

The idea of singling someone out just because you don't agree with what they believe in seems absurd, and then, to take it to the extent of exterminating those you disagree with is another magnitude of just evil.

There wasn't just Jews who were being ostracized and tortured and hurt.

It was a variety of different people, who were deemed different or lesser.

- It was among the most remarkable experiences that a university student could have, that they could have access to and establish such an intimate relationship with a Holocaust survivor over such an extended period of time.

- Santa Fe?

- Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah.

- And she's in Boulder now, so how lucky, right?

- Yeah, well, I'm working for a magazine at the moment.

- [Donna] And what makes it all the more precious is the opportunity is ending.

It's fading so rapidly.

- I remember getting Peter's name in my folder, and reading about his background, and I find out I got paired with a survivor who, himself was an engineer for 60-something years.

Peter.

- How are you?

- I'm good, how are you?

- Good to see you.

- Long time no see.

A child survivor, and rather than going into a camp, he was hidden.

(tense music) It's just by the luck and good grace of other people that he just kept on surviving.

(tense music) - I mean, the thought that my grandparents perished in Birkenau, and the last time I saw them was probably when I was seven, it was constantly in my mind while I was there.

(gravel crunching) I was walking alone, and there was one of these paddles stuck in the grass, and the words were in Hungarian, Hungarian Jews, which indicated that this is where they were killed.

I climbed over and photographed it, and stood there for awhile.

It was very difficult.

I was very, very much alone with the memories.

I remember very happy times, and those disappeared forever.

(tense music) Anyhow, I wasn't there all the time.

- Oh, so you just left him alone in the house.

After his whole experience in Europe, he then went to the University of Hungary to study electrical engineering, then came to Purdue, knowing one person in American, went to Purdue to finish his undergraduate degree, and then he went to MIT to get a masters, and then, after that, went back to school to get a Ph.D.

So if you were to ask someone what they've done, and they were to tell you all that, and then, say, by the way, at eight years old, my parents were also killed in the Holocaust and I was on my own for 10 years or something like that, you're amazed.

(tense music) - So we started in the fall, and this was supposed to end in the spring, but I believe it was around March, I was actually back in Texas when I got a call from his son, and I actually had never met his son.

I'd heard plenty about him, and seen pictures.

I got a phone call from his son, and it was pretty jarring.

Apparently Dr. Goldsmith had an accident.

He was walking, he hit his head, and things kind of moved pretty quickly, and he actually passed away.

And this was his son calling, to see if I could come for the funeral, and actually, this was my first real kind of exposure to death.

Thankfully, all, both sets of my grandparents are alive, and I guess I've been fortunate in that aspect.

So this was the first time I've had someone that I was getting to know pass away.

Yeah, so I quickly booked a flight back to Miami, and I was thankful that I was, at least, able to be there for the funeral, and get to meet his family, get to share my experiences with them, and hear more about his life from them.

But yeah, it kind of ended abruptly.

We had a lot of things planned, as far as conversations, and a project, and so on and so forth that I was excited to get to do with him, but obviously, that didn't happen.

(somber music) - [Deborah] Many of these survivors are quite elderly, remarkably still live on their own, and are alone most of the time.

And these young people would come in, and the world would shine for them a little bit.

(tense orchestral music) (gentle music) - I'd taken the Holocaust History class before I took this class.

I wrote a paper about how do people, you know, relatively normal people become these killers?

You read all the evidence, and things like that, but it just made me angry that anyone could ever do that to another person, disbelief that that could really happen.

- Where do you live?

- I live in Colorado.

- In Colorado.

- In Colorado, yeah.

I moved back there in January.

So I moved out there in January.

- You look so good.

(woman laughing) - Really wanted to engage me, and wanted me to understand and get every single little detail of her story down, and then, after hearing her story, and how traumatic it was, we talked about our lives, and she was really interested in what was going on with me, currently, and where I came from, where my family came from, my family history.

My grandmother's an immigrant from Sicily, so she was really interested in her whole story, and how she came to the United States.

I've been graduated four years.

Yeah, I've been all around the past few years.

- Oh.

- All around the world.

- Oh yes?

- I just came back to the U.S. - So you are special person.

You know, you learn so much in life now.

- Yeah.

I ended up doing an internship with a small NGO in Borneo, helping them build a sustainable tourism program for this forest that they were looking to protect.

From there, I went to Thailand, where I was working for a news agency run by refugees from Burma, producing videos, writing stories.

I've had quite a few interesting experiences over the past few years.

But in terms of other things that I've done in my life, the personal relationship that I've formed with Rachel was definitely one of the most enlightening and interesting and talk about transformational, definitely transformational experiences that I've had.

And really meeting you changed the course of my life, I think, so now, I'm working as a journalist now.

- Oh.

- That's what I'm doing.

- Good luck to you.

- Yeah, that's what I'm trying to do, so I don't think that I would have taken that step if I hadn't met you.

- Ah, you see?

- Because meeting you and getting to know you and your story.

- I'm happy that I gave you luck.

- Yeah, you did.

(laughs) So it inspired me, because it made me want to live with some sort of purpose.

- I wish you good luck.

- Thank you.

I always think about this, and how it started with this.

- Okay.

- This program, and then, meeting you, so, I'm very, I feel very fortunate to-- - Me too.

- To have met you.

- Me too.

- It was transformational for me, but not in the way that I expected.

It wasn't a direct like this internship made me go and become a historian, or made me go and become a Holocaust History teacher.

It wasn't like that, but it definitely set a spark kinda going in me that I don't think I would've had otherwise.

(gentle music) To try and use my life in a meaningful and purposeful way, to almost take the opportunity that was robbed from Rachel, I wanna use that, myself, to make a broader impact on the world.

(gentle music) Even with my career now, that's the major thing for me, is I wanna make an impact with whatever I'm doing.

(tense music) - Groundbreaking, to me, was the way that this class made you grow up.

- Children, some who never saw a survivor, some who never even saw a Jew, wanted to know what happened.

(inspirational music) - I grew up on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, on 94th and Riverside, went to Hunter College Campus Schools for nursery school, elementary school, middle school, high school.

My mom was a tax lawyer, my dad was in the music business.

They divorced when I was 12, and so, I lived half with my mom, half with my dad.

But it was an interesting childhood, it was a great childhood.

Growing up in New York City is unlike growing up anywhere else in the world.

You grow up very quickly, you have a lot of independence from an earlier age, whether it's taking the train or going to amazing museums or things like that.

(upbeat music) Then I moved to Miami when I was 18, to go to college at UM.

I've been here since, for the last seven or eight years.

Hey, Daniel, this is Jasper.

Yeah, I was wondering if you had a chance to look at the background and rationale section.

I wanted a school that had a campus, but not necessarily was rural.

When I started school, I wanted to be a medical doctor, and the summer after my freshman year, I trained as an EMT in New York City, (siren blaring) and a lot of our patients, actually, were mental health-related patients.

So when I went back to school in sophomore year, I dropped a chemistry class, and picked up Intro Psych, and that was just really much more fascinating to me, and I really connected with that material, versus chemistry, physics.

So then, I changed my major, and transitioned into psychology.

Okay, so follow me, and we will, I'll be asking you some questions about your sleep today.

- All right.

- How've you been doing?

- I've been okay, tired, so I guess it's good that I'm here.

- Okay, good.

All right, just go ahead and have a seat on that side of the table.

- [Patient] Okay.

- When I was in 6th grade, we read a book about the Holocaust, and two Holocaust survivors came to speak to us.

A lot of the gravity of that situation was lost on a 12-year-old, but I remember thinking to myself, when I have children, who is going to come to their elementary school and tell them about the Holocaust?

And when I heard about this opportunity to be in the program, that's kind of what came to my mind, this responsibility, almost, to carry on the story, and if I could learn one person's story, then there will always be a record of it, always be an account, and maybe, one day, I can share that with my children, so that they, too, can learn.

(gentle music) - When I talk to the students, and I talk to schools, higher education, higher ages, who understand, I beg them, speak up if you see something wrong.

Speak up and don't be quiet, when they see the world is going wrong, speak up.

(tense music) - First of all, in general, in the United States, we're seeing a greater tolerance for hate, for open expressions of hatred.

(somber music) We've seen too many things happening in the United States in the past two, three years, and again, it's not just the United States, and it's not just Charlottesville.

It's not just Charlottesville.

(crowd yelling) (horns blaring) - [Fred] We see them marching there, and then screaming, "Jews are not gonna take our place."

- [Crowd] Jews will not replace us.

Jews-- - They are ready to kill the Jews.

If they wouldn't be afraid, they would kill them tomorrow.

- [Crowd] Ooh, ooh, ooh, ooh, one people, one nation, and liberation.

- [Man] I've never seen a sight like this.

- These were reminiscent of typical, early Goebbels' kind of propaganda gatherings.

More than that, they chanted "Blood and soil."

That's a Nazi chant.

They chanted "Jews will not replace us."

That echoes Nazi propaganda.

And the tiki torches, that was not by chance, that was not by chance.

The organizers of this march knew exactly what they were doing.

Quite a few emblems for their racist, right-wing organizations, which are evocative of swastikas, of Nazi symbolism, but from their look, clean-cut.

They could've been out on the golf course the next day, you know.

(tense music) Charlottesville is part of a bigger thing.

It's not Charlottesville itself that frightens me, though it does frighten me.

It's the increased acceptance in the United States of a level of hatred, a level of prejudice, open expressions of prejudice, that have been facilitated by the political atmosphere in this country.

I'm not saying they created it, but what it did is make the forboden, the forbidden, acceptable.

(dramatic music) - 11 people are dead, six more are wounded, including two right now in critical condition, after a mass murder at a synagogue in Pittsburgh.

This is likely the deadliest attack on the Jewish community in the history of the United States.

- It made me think about my survivor, Edith.

When the Nazis came for her in Poland, it was on Yom Kippur and they had just left the synagogue, and they were going home, and they never got to break the fast.

The Nazis took them from their home before they could, and I was reminded of that when I was thinking about the shooting inside of the synagogue.

- A heinous act of violence in a far-off synagogue, nonetheless brings me, a Christian, here, to this place of remembrance, of six million sadly similar acts of violence.

(tense music) From the context of antisemitism, we're talking ancient faith-based rivalries and hostilities, worldwide, that are, sadly, being resurrected in ways that are so horrible.

You know, at times.

- Hey, hey, hey, hey!

- When we, as a society, aren't appropriately outraged by outrageous things, we create more and more space, incrementally for those things to happen again, and when we don't make a change following something terrible, what's to stop it from happening again?

It's really easy to pull the covers over your head and hide from the world.

It's really hard to do the things that are required to prevent something like this from ever happening again, to have the conversations we need to have.

(tense music) (gentle music) - It's crazy to think that people still have this hatred towards other people, and that's why I think this is so important, to teach others, because this is how the Holocaust started.

(somber music) With this hatred, with a few ideas that escalated to a few more people, that built into groups, and then, it turned violent.

To know that these things are still happening is terrifying, because I think that people still can be easily manipulated.

(somber music) - You hear about these Neo-Nazis and their rhetoric and their ideology.

It's more than just hate for your religion or your cultural group or your race or your identity.

It's this personal attack.

(somber music) - I've never met someone who denied the existence of the Holocaust, but I can't imagine the kind of blindness that they would have to have to believe in something like that.

(somber music) (tense music) - We're talking about how they were afraid people were gonna forget, or how they were afraid that the Holocaust deniers were going to eventually win, and no one would think that this actually happened.

(somber music) - You can read anything you want in a textbook, but you can't really get an idea of the atrocities and the crimes that were committed without talking to these people, and the less you know, and the more that people forget, the more you're gonna see people trying to deny that they had any involvement, or that what they did was wrong, or that it ever happened.

- Yes, I deny the Holocaust.

If you did any honest investigation of the Holocaust, you'd realize that is nothing but an international, extortion racket by the Jews to bleed-- - Yeah.

- Blackmail, extort, and terrorize their enemies.

(tense music) - You know, we've lived with antisemitism for 2,000 years, and we will probably continue to have to live with it.

(tense music) - [Ethel] This is 70 more years over, and we were hoping for a better world, and by all this teaching that we tried to do, by example, and showing, a lot of it is, sort of, I wonder what will come.

(tense music) - Before I started the internship, I thought, how do people not know that this happened?

You know, and how can you deny that that happened?

But I could see that was such a present fear with her, especially, and that really kinda stuck with me and really made me think a lot, especially with what's going on now.

(tense music) - You're held accountable.

If you're seeing grave injustices happening in front of you, you have a responsibility to speak up.

- My trial, which the movie "Denial" was based on, being sued by the world's, then, Holocaust denier, antisemite, whatever, it wasn't only me that was on the line.

I felt history was on the line, and the history of the Jewish people, and the history of the survivors was on the line, but history itself, in general.

And I knew if I didn't do it, someone else would have to fight it, someone else would wage this battle.

Who knows, if not for that reason, that I got the education I got, I had the chance to teach, I decided to write about Holocaust denial, who knows?

But I got that chance, and I would say the same thing about the students in this program.

- Add the extension?

- This line?

- [Woman] No, I mean, before their session, or?

- Holocaust deniers, they're not at all concerned with facts.

I think the world is getting more dangerous, but I don't think that hate can overtake us, and Edith is a huge part of why I think that.

(light music) - [Edith] It's sad to see that in Europe, there's a lot of antisemitism, and a lot of resurgency, that even countries like Hungary and Poland and Germany, that certain parties, that they are gaining momentum.

So that's very sad, and very scary to me.

- The intent to destroy all the Jewish people in Europe is a thought that is horrifying.

But it was turned into reality, it was turned into action.

I hope that by sharing these stories, they will understand that one should fight against this, whatever way you can.

- [Crowd] Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil, Sieg Heil.

- I remember seeing some of the Neo-Nazi rallies and things like that that were happening, reading about them on the news, and my first thought was, they were right, you know, this is coming back now, and it almost seems like, I don't know if it's a real possibility that people will forget about it, but with the survivors, unfortunately, dying now, and the way the world is now, it's really troubling and kind of worrying to me that that's going on.

(somber music) On a large scale, it took a whole war, and many years for this to be stopped, and the fact that it's still going on in some places throughout the world just, it can be really disheartening.

(tense music) (somber music) - When you look at Jewish history, the biggest single catastrophes were the destruction of the first temple, the destruction of the second temple and the Holocaust.

And it'll be a long time before the Holocaust recedes into a more distant memory.

Yes, it is the end of a generation, but it is not the end of an era.

- One of the beauties of this Holocaust survivors support internship was the fact that we were college students.

I was 20 when the program finished, and we all knew that we had different majors, that we had different interests.

We were going to grow up, and move, get married, have children, have different professions.

This internship was an investment in who we were as young adults, knowing that the relationships that we forged and the stories that we heard were going to necessarily impact us as people forever.

- I know it!

- And just hearing about your granddaughter.

I'm encouraged.

- I would hope that being part of this program made a difference in their lives, whether it's how they treat people in their community, whether, how they get involved on the national level or on a local level, just that it made a difference.

- I have great faith in young people, and their ability, actually, to connect with anyone other than their parents.

- I think, 13,000-- - These young people made a real connection.

It wasn't easy.

It took some coaxing-- - Outside of Miami.

- [Donna] But it changed the lives of both.

- The first time, it was five years.

When we see the white supremacy, marching in the United States of America, this is the 6th country where I live, and this is the country where I felt, I am equal to all other citizens.

(light music) - I went to (speaking in foreign language) and we had about 20 Jewish boys, my friends.

I'm the only survivor, I'm the only survivor of those 25 children.

- It's important to tell them, and to reassure them, and promise them that long after they're gone, their stories won't be forgotten.

- We open our lives to them.

I mean, we were through hell, you know.

Sometimes, when I talk about this, it's like I'm not talking about myself.

And yet, once we overcame all that, we managed to have a life.

(gravel crunching) - Whenever anybody tells them that this is the truth, the whole truth, nothing but the truth, the facts, question it, question everything.

And the second thing is that treat others the way you want to be treated, and if these messages get through, then it should be a better world.

- Someone said to me the other day, "You're the last generation "that's going to hear these stories firsthand."

You know, and that really hit me.

- My sister's son.

- Yeah.

There won't be any more living evidence that this happened, and that's a little scary and definitely sad.

Yeah, so I tried to get that, didn't get that.

I made it to like-- - They were looking for answers, and wanting, and looking for hope, and ironically, through their Holocaust survivors, they learned that the world can be better.

- I know that I am achieving something, that the people should know what we suffered.

- [Jasper] I feel, from my time with Edith, that I have a personal connection to the Holocaust.

- 500 young people were touched by the project forever.

(inspirational music) - I think we will have failed, if there is an end to a Holocaust era.

I think that that is what we are fighting so hard against.

- We have history books, we have images, we have the places themselves, where these things occurred.

It's on the rest of us to continue to tell the stories and keep the memories alive.

(inspirational music) - If we have the responsibility, only for those people who have had those firsthand encounters, we say that it's okay for other people to forget, or for other people to not explore this historical truth, or for other people to not share it, and I don't believe in that.

(inspirational music) The people themselves, there will be an end to hearing those stories from their lips, but just because the people who tell the stories firsthand will not live forever, that doesn't mean that the stories can't.

(inspirational music) - [Narrator] This program was made possible by Elizabeth G. Frank and family, in memory of Stephen Frank, beloved father, husband and brother.

Additional major funding was generously provided by the Gelvan Family Philanthropic Fund, Kent Services, the Five Millers Family Foundation, the Braman Family Foundation, Marita and George Feldenkreis, Leslie Miller Saiontz.

This film has been supported by a grant from the Conference on Jewish Material Claims against Germany.

A full list of funders can be found at APTonline.org