Isidore Nussenbaum; Survivor

My son is taking a class at school about Genocide. They have thus far covered Darfur, The Holocaust, and the Armenian genocide. As you may have guessed, he is not attending a public school. I do wish they offered a class on genocide in the public schools but I understand, history is not exactly valued in the public schools anymore. Unless perhaps, they offer a class on the history of Global Warming Climate Change. But I digress. The students read a book written by a survivor of the holocaust. His name is Isidore Nussenbaum and his book is titled, He Isn't Coming Here Anymore. Mr. Nussenbaum settled in California and so he comes every year to my son's school to talk about his book, Poland, which is where he is from and the holocaust. I attended class when he spoke to the kids, this year. Izzy, as those who know him call him, is an articulate, witty, and sensitive man who has lived with memories that torture him, to this day. Izzy told of the occasion of the last time he saw his mother. His mother and sister had been separated from Izzy and his brother in the concentration camp. When he happened to see her in the yard once, he and his brother raced towards her. The guards yelled at them and gave chase. When Izzy reached his mother, they embraced and she quickly gave him a crust of bread she'd been hiding, for Izzy to share with his brother. When the guard reached them, the guard beat his mother, brutally, as the children wept and pleaded for him to stop.  As Izzy re-told the story, his eyes tearing up, voice quivering, his grief and feelings of guilt, were palpable. "I never saw her again," he said in a quiet voice. How can one conceive of such cruelty? Soon, there will be no more survivors to tell their own stories; so we must. In their memory, in the memory of all those whose lives were extinguished.

Comments

[KS]

When I was in junior high in Los Alamitos, a Holocaust survivor came and spoke in one of my classes. I remember him showing the number on his arm. I don't remember his name. Maybe he was related to a student.

[Nora]

It is pretty hard to grasp when we are kids, the horror that these people lived through. Even now, the photos and displays at the Holocaust Museum just floor me.