The foul odor of filth and death still haunts Marion Blumenthal Lazan.
Lazan said she spent her days as a child searching for four pebbles of the same size and shape while trapped in a German concentration camp during the Holocaust. Lazan and her family spent six and a half years in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, living like refugees with little food, water or sufficient housing.
“We as children saw things that no one of any age should have to see,” Lazan said.
Lazan spoke to more than one hundred people at the First Methodist Church in Carbondale. She recounted memories of the Holocaust and signed more than 80 copies of her book, “Four Perfect Pebbles: A Holocaust Story.”
In her speech, Lazan said Nazi German soldiers crammed her family and 600 other Jews into the barracks of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp. Following Hitler’s rise to power, more than six million Jews were forced into concentration camps scattered throughout Germany.
“We were pulled and dragged out of cattle cars and greeted by German guards who were shouting at us and threatening us with the most vicious German dogs by their sides,” Lazan said. “To this day, I still feel a certain kind of fear when I see a German shepherd.”
Lazan and her family suffered through the war until liberated by the Russian Army nearly six and a half years later. Although weak and ill with typhus, Lazan, her mother and older brother survived the brutal treatment of the Holocaust. Her father did not.
“I separated myself from this ever having happened to me, and that is how I deal with it,” Lazan said.
Lazan said she has told her story to more than one million students, and many students from SIUC were present for her speech at the church.
Rachel Wides, a graduate student from Carbondale in social work, brought several students from Hillel, a Registered Student Organization for Jewish students. She said Lazan’s speech was truthful and something her students needed to hear.
“We need to hear blunt honesty to learn and grow from what happened in the past,” Wides said.
Alex Francois, a senior from Kankakee studying music performance, played the lead cello during a rendition from Schindler’s List.
“It’s like I’m dreaming,” Francios said. “(Playing) paints a picture in my head and brings shivers to my bones.”
No matter how many times Lazan tells her story, Pastor Alan Rhein said it would never be enough.
“We just can’t allow people to ever forget this,” he said.
Christina Spakousky can be reached at 536-3311 ext. 258.
