Our history teacher, Ms. Lewis invited husband and wife Barbra Aharoni and Harry Shamir to share their stories about surviving the WWII Nazi Holocaust. Both are local educators living in Plymouth. Aharoni was born in 1946 ,and was not alive at the time, but shared the experiences of her family members. Her story primarily took place in Lithuania and spoke to her relatives given up by people in their own country and massacred. Shamir’s story was of his personal experiences as he recounted many details of his family’s evasion of the Nazis, including his escape to Italy where he was caught by the Vichy French government and sent back to German concentration camps.

The assembly began with the introductions and when members of the audience began to clap Shamir cut them off saying, “We are not here to entertain. We are here to teach. There will be no applause.” He wanted his audience to know that they were here for a reason, and that reason was not to just tell their holocaust stories, but to ensure these stories were not lost as time moved on.

The presentation began with Shamir randomly calling on students and asking them how they would feel if members of their family were all of a sudden just gone. His powerful words and tone stuck with many members of the audience. “Shamir was honestly a little intimidating and scary,” said Patrick Callanan (AHS Class of 2016).

Shamir’s story took place in many different countries as his family fled persecution. He went from Germany to Italy and France to escape the Nazi regime. Members of his family were put into concentration camps, and he was forced to move between many members of family as a very young boy.

Aharoni’s story took place in Lithuania where many generations of her family lived. Lithuanian officials who conspired with Nazis killed people in her family’s town in a mass shooting. She noted that her grandparents were some of the wealthiest people in the country, but that fact did not save them from the Germans.

The presentation was solemn and the room was quiet both out of respect for the presenters but also because of the awe inspiring words they spoke. Their ultimate goal was to tell their stories in a way that people our age would not only remember, but talk to others about what we had been a part of. They both reiterated the fact that they needed to keep their stories alive as a testimony to what had occurred, so that the Holocaust is not forgotten. For this they were successful – it was a truly memorable experience.