BRTC Hosts its 19th Annual Holocaust Survivor Series Virtually, Roughly 600 in Attendance

Black River Technical College, in cooperation with the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, hosted its 19^th annual Holocaust Survivor Series lecture via Zoom with roughly 600 attendees.

Rose-Helene Spreiregen was born and raised in Paris France. She was the daughter of Polish immigrants who left Poland fleeing from antisemitism. Her parents married in 1929, but inevitably the marriage failed when she was an infant, so she never knew her father.

At the age of five and a half-years-old, her mother sent her to a Jewish boarding school. She remembers her time at the boarding school as being a lonely time for her since most of the children that lived there had siblings and she did not. She said she was an excellent student and some of her most prized possessions as a youngster were prizes she had won for excellence in her studies, including a book she treasured.

When she was eight, she was sent home to her mother as the French authorities feared being bombed when World War II began. She said her mother sent her and her grandmother to live in the countryside, as many French children were during that time, due to air raids.

Her mother came to visit her in May of 1940 and was shot in the foot during an air raid, so she and her mother braved those to seek medical attention for her mother’s foot.

She reminisced about traveling by road in the countryside and watching long lines of people streaming down the dirt roads carrying whatever they could with them. “They were Holland and Belgium residents that left home with all they could carry fleeing as the Germans invaded their countries. I remember everyone using those roads would often have to get off the road and hide in ditches when air raids would fly over.”

Upon returning to Nazi-occupied Paris she and her mother found that Jewish people had to register themselves at the police station, were not allowed inside restaurants or movie venues, were not allowed to use or own phones, could not use the public subway system, and were not allowed to travel further than 16 miles from Paris.

In 1941, authorities began rounding up Jewish men and holding them in camps, and her mother recognized the dire turn of World War II for Jews. Her mother acquired false I.D. papers and found a smuggler to take herself out of the country. She intended to find a safe place and send money back to Rose-Helene and her grandmother to join her.

Unfortunately, the smuggler betrayed her mother and she was arrested. Rose-Helene later learned that her mother had volunteered to ride in a cattle car with a large group of children to Auschwitz.

“The cattle cars people were packed in; they were given no food or water for the duration of the trip. So, if my mother had not died on the trip, she was more than likely taken to the gas chamber upon her arrival at Auschwitz,” Rose-Helene said.

She remained with her grandmother in Paris. It was too dangerous for her grandmother to leave the apartment, so at 11-years-old Rose-Helene was forced to face extreme antisemitism as she did the shopping for the family. For 13 months her grandmother hid inside the apartment, until the enemy got too close.

“When we started to see the trucks being loaded on our street to take our community members away, Grandmother decided we would go to my aunt’s in south France.”

The train ride to South France was a terrifying time for Rose-Helene as her grandmother was Polish and her French was not well-developed. Twelve-year-old Rose-Helen had her grandmother pretend to sleep and at checkpoints along the way Rose-Helene spoke to the officers who checked their false I.D. papers. Once in South France, the pair met with Rose-Helene’s aunt who could not take them in as she too was living a life of hiding under the false pretenses of being another person.

Rose-Helene and her grandmother set up residence in a small rundown store on the border of Sweden. They had electricity and cold running water. However, there was no cook stove, and no furniture. Nearby neighbors furnished them with a cook stove and a mattress. The pair lived off a barter system often trading wine and chocolate they had carried from Paris for things they needed or sewing and laundry for trade.

In May of 1945, the war ended and Rose-Helene was 13-years-old. They returned to their former apartment and found that all of their prized possessions had been destroyed or taken by the Germans, but they still had a place to live. Rose-Helene finished her high school education in three months, “which was a miracle after having missed two and a half years of school.” Her future held college, marriage, and moving to America.

She said for many years she did not talk about World War II at all. “It was too painful, but after many years and being friends with several volunteers who shared their stories through the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum,” she began to open up. She said all of the talk presently about whether or not the Holocaust even happened and a newer rise in antisemitism made her decide that “Young people need to know that six million Jews were murdered. People need to know that if they see something wrong, they must speak up.”

She said she still has PTSD to this day. She cannot walk in front of people, and she always looks for the exits when entering an unfamiliar place, so “ I can make a quick escape.”

BRTC’s Holocaust Survivor Series has reached more than 8,500 people and 30 schools in Arkansas and Missouri during the 10 years.

The 2024 Holocaust Survivor Series will be held on October 29 and 30. The event will be free and open to the public.

For more information about future Holocaust Survivor events at BRTC, contact Shawna Lepard, Development Specialist for Institutional Advancement, at (870) 248-4026 or Shawna.lepard@blackrivertech.edu.