Holocaust Author And Survivor Share Message Against Hate
By DENNIS PHILLIPS
Jerry Spinelli, award-winning author, talks to about 650 eighthgrade pupils from the county about his book Milkweed, which deals with events surrounding the Holocaust in Warsaw, Poland. Spinelli and Dr. Helen Fagin, Holocaust survivor, have been part of a two-day event to educate people about the Holocaust at the Robert H. Jackson Center. P-J photo by Dennis Phillips |
Dr. Helen Fagin focuses on events that happened in her life. Jerry Spinelli discusses fictional events.
Their message to those at the Robert H. Jackson Center, however, is the same — don’t be a creator of hate.
Ms. Fagin, a Holocaust survivor, and Spinelli, an author who wrote a fictional book based on real-life events, talked about experiences in the Warsaw ghetto during the Nazi reign during World War II.
Ms. Fagin, a retired English professor, was the featured speaker Tuesday and also spoke during a presentation featuring both educators to about 650 county eighth-grade pupils on Wednesday. Ms. Fagin discussed her experiences in Warsaw and about her life as an educator since.
She told the audience the book recreated the feel of the Warsaw ghetto, which was created by the Nazis to imprison Jewish people. Ms. Fagin told the audience that even though she is getting older and soon will no longer be able to educate, she will continue to tell her experiences as a child in Poland and will encourage people not to be a creator of ‘‘dehumanization.’’
‘‘You are never too old to teach,’’ she said.
Spinelli, an award-winning author, wrote the book Milkweed, which was based on real-life experiences in the Warsaw ghetto. The book was used as the basis for a statewide writing competition.
‘‘For the second year in a row, we are cooperating with the LYC Program in sponsoring a statewide writing competition,’’ said Rolland Kidder, Jackson center executive director.
During his discussing to the pupils, Spinelli discussed how he came up with the idea and why he wrote the book. He said he had heard a story about a person in the ghetto who helped his son escape. He said the man drugged his son to make him look dead and then took him to a makeshift cemetery the Nazis had set up outside of the ghetto. When the child woke at night, he was then free to escape.
‘‘The world didn’t need another book about the Holocaust, there are already thousands of them,’’ he said. ‘‘I had no credentials to write about the Holocaust. I was not a survivor. Who wants to hear from me? I thought I only have one credential — I cared.’’
Spinelli, author of 26 published books, talked about how he did research for the book reading real-life stories about the ghetto and placing them into his fictional tale.
‘‘A lot of things that happened in the book really happened to people,’’ he said.