thank you so much for the introduction um I'm so so happy to be here it's my first time to this area of Colorado and um I'm honored to be with you and to share my story of how I
survived the Holocaust so I speak to thousands of students and adults every year with the hope that it will promote greater awareness and understanding of the dangers of prejudice of
discrimination and it's my hope that each and every one of us will stand up to any type of injustice i speak about the Holocaust because it was one of the darkest times in history as a result of World War II
uh uh between 50 million and 60 million people were killed 6 million Jewish people were murdered because the Nazis um were determined to destroy all Jews of Europe one and a half million Jewish
children were murdered only 11% survived and I was one of those very lucky children so I was born in Krakco Poland and um I lived with my mother father and
baby sister Sarena my sister's name was Sarena and we lived in a little town 50 miles south of the city of Krakco and I lived there with a large f family extended family grandparents cousins aunts
uncles i was the first grandchild in the family so I was pampered i was spoiled i had an uncle who had a motorcycle with a little sidec car he would put me in there uh strap me in take me to the candy store take me for
rides i remember cooking and baking with my mother and my grandmother preparing for the holidays and oh by the way my birth name was not Janet my birth name was Gustava and my nickname was Ga which means baby
and throughout my childhood my name was changed uh two or three times also um my appearance had a lot to do with my survival because I looked like an Aryan child aryan or Aryanism
was a doctrine that was adopted by the Nazis they were ti trying to develop a master race and they thought that people should have certain appearance blonde hair light complexion uh green or blue eyes and I sit that
profile well my wonderful childhood came to an abrupt end september 1st 1939 i was just four years old my father told me he was awakened 5 in the morning he heard explosions so he turned on the
radio and the announcer said that Poland was attacked and this was the beginning of of the war so the first few days of the war were very crazy chaotic confusing people didn't know where to go what to
do so my father sent me and my mother and my sister to my other grandparents home in a town called Vadovitz and when we arrived there everybody was packing up their belongings and running away
running away from the fighting heading in the direction of Russia going east my grandfather packed some of our belongings onto a horse and wagon and we started this very difficult journey and I remember certain aspects of that trip
because there were planes overhead shooting at us we had to jump off the wagon and hide in a ditch and wait till the shooting stopped sometimes bridges and roads would be out and we had to cross the river by foot and after very
difficult uh journey we arrived at our destination in Russia in the meantime my father and my uncles tried to join the Polish army to fight the Germans but Poland was defeated in
one month's time and when that happened my father and my uncles joined this caravan of people that was constantly streaming out of Poland heading to Russia when my father first arrived he did not
know where we were because communication in those days was very difficult not many people had telephones and there were no cell phones in those days my father advertised in the newspaper looking for us and in time he was able
to find us life in Russia was very difficult because there was shortage of food and no shortage of work and sometimes I remember my mother and I would go to the forest to pick mushrooms my mother would
make a mushroom stew stew or sometimes my father would come home after he was out looking for work um with maybe a piece of bread or a potato or something to eat two very tragic things happened while we were in
Russia one day there was an announcement made that any men who needed a job should report at the town hall my two uncles went that day because it they needed work my dad didn't go because he didn't feel well that day when they
arrived at the town hall there was a marching band playing nationalistic songs they were made to sing and then they were marched to a nearby ravine told to Andres and they were shot right into the ravine so that
evening we were waiting for our uh uncles to come home but they didn't the other very tragic thing that happened to our family was that my baby sister Selena got very sick she contracted dtheria
dtheria is an illness that we no longer get in this country because when you were babies you were vaccinated against that terrible disease but in those days there was no vaccine there was no uh treatment and she died she was just 18
months old after we were in Russia for well over a year there was an announcement made that all the Polish people who crossed the border there were about 200,000 Polish nationals that crossed
the border all those people in order to be allowed to stay and work had to take out Russian citizenship well the family was divided my grandparents said um my parents decided that we would go
back to Poland because they were afraid when the war would be over they couldn't go back and get their property back but my grandparents said "No no we can't do that it's too much for us." So they stayed so the people that stayed were
put onto trains and sent off to region of Russia called Siberia siberia is a region where it's extremely extremely cold and they were sent for slave labor and my grandmother died
there uh when we and we went back to Poland when we arrived back in our town at first my father was arrested because the Nazis said that um he was a communist because we came from Russia i
remember every day my mother cooking and she and I would walk to the jail to bring my father and his food and in time he was released all the Jewish people were forced to live in a ghetto a ghetto was a neighbor neighborhood that the Nazis
selected they made all the people move out of that neighborhood and all the Jewish people move into the neighborhood all the Jewish people were forced to wear armbands to identify themselves as Jews i remember one time the Gustapo the
secret police came to our apartment they were searching for valuables money jewelry furs art they made everybody undressed and they just took whatever they wanted every day there were roundups of
people some were taken um and sent off for slave labor others were taken directly to the cemetery made to dig their own graves and they were shot into the graves my dad heard that the Gestapo was
looking for him so my parents made a decision that we would try to escape so one night um we um the night we decided to leave we had to take off our armbands and we went to the train
station train stations were very dangerous because often when plane closed Gustapo would be there but we were lucky we were able to take a train and we ended up in another town called Nepoa uh where my mother had some relatives
living when we arrived in that town we realized that the situation there was no different from what was happening in our town and my parents realized that it was very dangerous for us to remain there so once again they made a decision to try
to escape so one night it was August 1942 very bright night my father got a horse and wagon and we started to drive out of town we didn't get very far because
suddenly in the distance we saw that Polish police was coming on horseback we jumped off the wagon and we started to run you might be wondering why would we be afraid of the Polish police well the reason for that was that there was a
segment of the Polish police called the L police and they cooperated and collaborated with the Nazis so we were scared and we started to run and we ended up in these fields where potato plants were growing we tried to
hide but very quickly they found us we weren't able to hide they pulled us out of pul and started to beat us up with these split big grubs and at that point and they made us
return at that point realized that there was nowhere to hide there was no place to run or no place to escape and then they made an agonizing decision they decided to give me
away and so one day they sat me down and they explained that I was going to go with Maria maria was a nanny to one of my cousins they begged Maria to take me and she
agreed and they said to me to be good to listen to Maria and to be brave and that we would be reunited soon so I left I left with her in the meantime there was another order by the Gestapo that the
people from that town and all the surrounding towns and villages had three days to report at an area outside of Krakco called Balichka my p my parents made another decision they decided that they would
separate from each other their thinking was that if they separated maybe just maybe one of them would survive so great on that day they left separately and when they
arrived at at that appointed place there were about 12,000 people in a big big meadow it was very hot there was no water there was no food and there was no place for people to sleep and and so
they had to sleep on the ground and then there was a selection a selection meant that there was a group of Nazi officers who made a decision who would live and who would die
approximately 1,000 men were selected for slave labor my father was one of those men another approximately 1,000 old people and children t were taken directly to a
forest made to dig their own graves and they were shot into the graves and the remaining people were put into 53 box cars marked with the letter B for the concentration the death camp actually um
called Belits approximately ly 150 people were put into each box car it was so crowded that um people couldn't sit or lie down they had to stand for 5 days that's how
long the trip took to get to the to the death camp when they arrived there people were taken off the train some people had already died one of the reasons was that each floor of each box car was sprinkled with a white
disinfectant when that got wet with urine it gave off toxic fumes so pe some people had died the remaining people were taken directly to be gassed so this camp
um existed for 6 months and in that period of time 600,000 people were murdered only two people survived this camp so my mother my grandmother my
cousins my aunts my many of my relatives were victims of that camp when the Nazis um learned how to kill even more efficiently from that point on they sent the people to different uh concentration
camps the biggest of the camps was Avitz where million and a half people were murdered now I'll be talking to you about concentration camps and I want you to know what these camps were like because
when we think of camps we think summertime sports uh recreation fun good times but these camps were designed to work people to death to torture them to starve them and
eventually to murder them so my father was sent to the Krakco Yellow so um and I in the meantime um so let me just finish with my father so my father
was sent to the crack the crack ghetto while uh so while he was in the ghetto um every morning at 4:00 in the morning he and other prisoners were sent to work in a cable factory my father worked on an assembly line making
electrical cables he kept a little photograph of me in front of him on his mishun he said that's the only reason he wanted to live knowing that he gave me away and he had to find me when the war would be over he also said that he was starving because all that the prisoners
were given to eat was little piece of bread and black coffee in the morning and at night very thin soup he also mentioned that he had a German foreman who every once in a while would give my father little extra piece of
bread and my father was very very grateful for that while my father was still living in the ghetto the Nazis were building the concentration camp called Parus on the outskirts of the city of Krakow and when that camp was
completed uh all the uh Krakow ghetto was liquidated and all the people were sent to live in the concentration camp and my father also including my
father now I live with Maria maria had an apartment in Krakco i remember so well being in that apartment because there were times when she would go out in the evening lock the door and leave me alone i was really scared because I
was in a pitch black apartment there was no electricity so I was scared i was crying i was trying to unlock the door but obviously I couldn't one day there was a sharp knock on the door maria opened the door and
there was a Nazi officer standing there he said "I have orders to search your apartment to see if you're hiding any Jews." He barged in he looked under all the furniture he turned some of the furniture over he came up to me and he
um held up my grade he wanted to know who I was and Maria told him a story which obviously wasn't true but she said that I was her niece that she was taking care of me because her sister was sick and so
he accepted that story and he kind of looked at me and um and turned around and he left and to this day I remember what he looked like he had blonde hair blue eyes light complexion and he was
wearing shiny leather boots that came up to his knees and I could hear the clicking of his heels as he went down the steps one day um Maria said "Pack his suitcase we're
leaving." I had no idea where we were going we got on the trolley car and we got all and we started to walk a little bit and all of a sudden we were right in front of the ghetto or the
ghetto the ghetto had a um a fence with barb wire on top and um and there was my father standing on the other side of the fence and we w we approached the fence and he put his
fingers through the mesh of the fence and I I grabbed his fingers and I said "Where's Mamusha?" Mamusha is mommy in Polish and he didn't answer he looked down and I just knew that I shouldn't
ask any more questions and all the sudden there was a woman standing next to us and she my father said to me "You're going to go with your
cousin and be a good girl listen to her be brave and we will be reunited soon." And um this woman picked up my suitcase i had never met this cousin i didn't know
her and she grabbed the suitcase pulled me pulled my arm and she pulled me away from the fence and we started to walk very briskly and I kept looking back to see if I could still see my father and very soon he
disappeared so um my cousin was young woman she um she was just 19 she was able to obtain a birth
certificate from a Polish priest um of a little Polish girl Polish ca Catholic girl who died and I took on this girl's identity her name was Christina Antokevich and that was my new name from
that from that point on and my nickname was Kisha my cousin also had Polish um Christian identity her name was Helina Baloska and we lived in a little town uh
outside of Krakco called Michelin so um sometimes when uh she would come back to the city we would take the trolley car and she would always tell me to be quiet not to not to say a word uh
because Polish people were forbidden to sit in front of the trolley Polish people had to sit in the back the front was reserved for Germans but because she spoke German fluently I didn't speak at all German she would tell me to be quiet
she was very blazing very confident and um uh and she you know she thought she could get away with it and she did so as I mentioned she we lived in another another little town she was very mean to me she used to be me with a fireplace
poker and when I cried for my mother she would say "Your mother is dead she's never coming back for you." I remember one time she beat me so severely that all my fingernails um turned like black and blue and some of my nails got
infected and um and eventually fell off there was a very nice neighbor right next door her name was Yanida yan I remember the time my fingers were so badly injured and Nina made bandages for my fingers and um she
was really nice to me but sometimes my cousin would go out for the whole day um she would make me sit on the front stoop cold and hungry in my pajamas and Yanina sometimes would give me some bread to eat and sometimes she would let me play with her baby
one day my cousin um said she was going to meet her boyfriend in Kraco so she had a Polish boyfriend who lived in the same town as we did he used to come and visit but that day she said she was
going to meet him in the city and she took me with her when we were arrived in Krakow she took me into a church and she said "You sit here don't move i'll be back and she said I'm going to meet
Victor and I'll be up in the cafe but I'll be back for you so I sat in the church and I waited and waited and I didn't know what to do with myself i counted the tiles in the floor and you
know I was counting lights and and she she didn't come back so I walked out of the church it was late afternoon and I crossed the street i saw that the whole street was cordoned off i crossed the street there were little
groups of people standing and talking and I overheard them say that the Gustapo had come and they arrested everybody in that cafe so here I was 7 years old walking up and down the street
crying i had no idea what to do suddenly a woman came up to me very quickly put me under her cape and she said "What's wrong why are you crying what happened?" So I said "Well my cousin was
in the cafe and now she's gone." I said "Could you please take me to the bus i was going to go back to my village." And she said "Oh no no you're too little." So she took me into the building the same building where the cafe was and she
um uh she took me upstairs to the apartment of a woman by the name of Alitzia Gump alitia asked me who are you what happened you know where you from so I had a story that I practiced to tell if I was ever captured and I told her
that I was uh I came from Warsaw which was many many miles away and that my father was a Polish officer in the Polish army and um and both of my Karens were killed in a bombing raid alita
accepted my story and she said I could stay however I couldn't stay in that apartment for three reasons one reason was that there was a Nazi officer living in the building another reason was that um Alitia's mother who was also living
in the in the same building in an apartment and she was part of the Polish resistance and in her apartment she ran a hospital and she had shortwave radios and ammunition and the third reason I couldn't stay there was that when the
Gestabo made a arrest they always came back for the second time so it was too dangerous to have me there so that evening early evening the oldest son Stashek took me and we walked for several miles and we came to a farm that
was owned and operated by the Catholic Church and Adich's brother-in-law was the administrator of that farm so I remained on the farm one day we had slaughtered a pig and they were cutting up the carcass in
the kitchen and the kitchen was a mess suddenly there was a knock on the door some a neighbor came to tell us that the Polish Blue Police was on the way it was not unusual for them to drop by to pick up cheese butter eggs any any things
like that that they needed so very quickly they cleaned up the kitchen they hid everything in the attic and we waited and the Polish Blue Police finally came and they were when they came I was very scared because I was
always afraid of unicorns so I don't know what made me do this i guess my fear my anxiety and I said give them vodka so they pulled out the vodka and they were drinking and then I started to sing and
dance so they were laughing at at me and amused and drinking and finally they left and my dad who was in the concentration camp told me of this incident that happened to him one night
in the middle of the night he had to use the bathroom outside and he found a cigarette stump and he was smoking a guard saw him and shot him in the face the bullet lodged under my father's cheekbone and just
stopped right there my father couldn't get any medical treatment so that bullet had to remain so when the Nazis realized that they were losing the war they wanted to destroy any
evidence so uh all the prisoners in my father's concentration camp were told to dig up the very shallow graves all around this camp there were thousands and thousands
of bodies buried in shallow graves they had to dig up the bodies put them in a big pile and burn them my father said he could not get the smell of the burning bones and flesh for a very long time and when that j job was completed the Nazis
burned this camp to the ground today there's a monument and a museum there and the remaining prisoners were sent to other concentration camps my father ended up in three different concentration camps and I remember when the war was
coming to an end because there were fighting all around the farm and we too had to use the out house to go to the bathroom it was very dangerous and finally it was decided that it was too dangerous for us to remain so we left
the farm and we moved to Krakow to Alitzia's apartment and I remember there were times in the middle of the night there would be a siren that would tell us that bombing was about to happen we had to quickly put on our coats light a
candle and everybody in the building walked down the stairs to the cellar it was a very large cellar with a dirt floor benches all around the room and we all sat there with our candles waiting for another siren to tell us that it was
okay to go back upstairs so after a while we went back to the farm and one day um my cousin's father came to get i had
never met him before but I was I was afraid of him because I was afraid of his daughter and he looked like a rat to me you know he had a I don't know i just called him a rat because I guess just the way he looked
you know he had like pointy nose and whatever um so this family was very you know very attached to me they cared about me and I certainly loved them but you know he was my relatives so they let me go so I lest with him and went back
to Krakco um to his apartment and um anti-semitism which is prejudice against Jewish people was very severe after the war also so um she
maintained his uh Catholic identity his name was Dr antony Kajeski and I remember that um she um I had my first communion when I was with him and this was in order to uh for us
to look like a good Catholic family so I had my first communion one day he told me "Pack up your suitcase we're leaving no idea again where I was going." and he took me to
the uh Jewish refugee center in Kkow so uh we entered the building we went up to the second floor there was a desk there with a lady at at the desk he introduced me and
um and all of a sudden he you know put my suitcase down and he said goodbye and he left and um that was it just left them there i had no idea what was going to happen so I would like to read you a
short excerpt of my book Becoming Janet Finding Myself in the Holocaust this is chapter 14 and I have to read it because I'm old and I can't see well enough so this is chapter 14
called They called us the upstairs orphans [Applause] we were Sherota i learned that was what the grown-ups called us the upstairs orphans we were the children who had no
parents we had had parents but not anymore we had been hiding in closets forest outouses and under floorboards some were starved and beaten or had been passed from stranger to stranger with
false identities like me each of us had a story but we never spoke about what we saw or what we did because the stories were too terrible i learned that I wasn't the only one who been abandoned
38 Wugga Street was the last stop for Shiro like me but we were the lucky ones because at least we weren't dead so I I lived in this um in this um refugee
center there were about 70 children like myself i was 10 years old at the time and there were some children who were tiny much smaller and some were bigger and um every day there were lists posted on the wall with names of
survivors along came a woman her name was Lena lena came every day looking at the list trying to find her own family her little girl and her husband and other family members and she came across this room full of children and she made a decision that she had to do something
for the children so in time she was able to open two orphanages i remember the night we left for the or orphanage we had to leave in the middle of the night because it was because there were men picketing in
front of the refugee center carrying hateful slogans saying we all should have been murdered so uh we there were two trucks we climbed into the trucks one of the trucks was for the children who had tuberculosis and other
infectious diseases because the Polish hospitals refused to take Jewish children so I went to live in an orphanage only the high school age children were sent to public school every day the children came back they
were beaten up by the Polish children lena went to the school pleading with the principal and the teachers to please please please protect the children but they didn't and Lena was always afraid that our home would be attacked because
the other orphanage was attacked three different times and finally it was decided that it was too dangerous to leave it open so they they closed that orphanage and those children came to live with us uh and be because
um because Lena was so afraid that our home would be attacked she obtained ammunition and the high school age children were trained in use of ammunition uh and one night a Polish
lady knocked on the door she came to tell us that our home was going to be attacked so the children took their positions on the balcony um and on the terrace and they waited and sure enough in the middle of the night men came they
were on horseback and they were carrying fire torches and they were shooting at the at the home but the children were able to descend the home one day Lena went back to the refugee center to pick up some provisions and she overheard a man
asking about his child she said to him "Could you describe what your daughter looks like?" He described a girl with long blonde braids uh green eyes like complexion and a birthark on her left
thigh and she thought for a moment and she said "I think I think I have your daughter." So she came back to the orphanage she called me down to her office i know I didn't know why i thought did I do something wrong you
know why was she calling me down there so I came down and um she said Krisha because that was my nickname and I was still being called by that name Krisha um can you pull up your skirt a little
bit she looked at my birthark and she said "I have wonderful surprise your father has survived." And I'll always remember that reunion with my dad
because he was he looked like a skeleton he was so skinny his clothes hung on him he was kissing me hugging me telling me he's going to take the I didn't want to go with him because for the first time I
had friends and I and Lena was our mother we called her mother of course my father wasn't well she he couldn't take me right away so he rented a room nearby i saw him every day he got
stronger he gained weight i hadn't seen him for three and a half years so he that's a pretty long time and you know at that age so um and eventually he was able to take a and you know he she and I get got
reacquainted and of course I love my father very much and and um we went back to our town and uh we lived with three other people that survived we we lived above
my grandparents' door in their apartment but we weren't safe there either because there were notes posted on Aonour saying we would be murdered two of my father's good friends were murdered after the war two young men driving in a car they were ambushed
and shot my father went to the police chief asking for protection and the police chief said all he could do is to give my father a gun so my father slept with a gun and finally she made a decision that we couldn't stay there it
was too dangerous so we left our town of Novatard and we moved to Krakco by that time my grandfather and my aunt and uncle returned from Siberia and so we moved in with them and one day my father and I were in
the park we were just walking around and he said "Uh Gaia," which was my my nickname when I was a little girl "Jiza I have to ask you a very important question." He said "You know we can't
stay in Poland any longer it's very dangerous for us we have to leave." He said "You have one uncle that lives in Palestine and you have another uncle Uncle Jack who lives in the United States where would you like to go and I
thought for a moment and I said I want to go to America he said why why do you want to go there and I said I heard that money glue on trees so of course it wasn't an you know easy
situation we couldn't just pack our bags and leave it took us about two years to get the proper documents so we had distant relatives living in New Jersey they were the ones who sponsored art coming to America they sent us documents
that stated that if my father could not support himself or and support me that this family would take care of us so that we would never have to be a burden to this government and to go on public assistance so in March of
1947 we sailed on a marine transport boat uh very very rough crossing because the Atlantic is stormy in March and um all the girls and women uh slept on one deck and all the men and
boys slept on a different deck so I was separated from my father i remember being very excited going to the um cafeteria because there was a vending machine there and I would put in a nickel and pull out a a Milky Way and I
love love Milky Ways i love them then i love them now and the other the other food that I loved uh was red jell-o i had never seen food like that i I thought it was magical so we came to New Jersey and we
moved in with my uncle and my American aunt and I was 11 almost 12 when I came here and I had never gone to school my uncle took me to an elementary school and right there in the school
office he said to me "Where do you want to go i mean what name do you want to have you have to have an American name." I didn't want another name you know I had enough names already but I thought for a moment and u I came with the name
of I came up with the name Janette because we had a cousin who lived in Paris France she used to visit in the summer she was very beautiful glamorous she had long red nails and her name was Janette so I said "Janette and my uncle
turned to the school secretary and he said her name is Janet." So that's how I became Janet so and by the way I just want to show you this was my eighth grade graduation so I was the same age as you
were here I'm 10 years old and here I'm your age so they put me into a fifth sixth grade combination grade in April but by end of school year I was promoted to seventh
grade and um but we had a very serious problem when we first came because we came on a medical visa for my father to have his bullet removed so that was only good for 3 months we had another visa to go to
Venezuela and 3 months but the only way we could remain in this country is because my father married an American citizen so the family looked around and they sounded a wise so in that very short period of time I had a
new stepmother new new school new appearance cuz they cut my hair new language and um every everything was new and I remember my eighth grade specifically we remember this because my eighth grade teacher
always referred to me as that little foreign girl i was trying to blend in fit in not stand out too much but that's how she identified me i was very very lucky cuz I had a group of girlfriends they were so wonderful to me they took
me under their wing they socialized me and I'm still friends with them some of them and they still live in New Jersey i speak to my son Pat every week um so that was that was
just a wonderful thing for me and then I went off to high school obviously and I was a good student i uh I did well in high school with one exception i was really bad in geometry so that would I I
couldn't get that subject at all but um I was active in high school i you know I was in clubs i was in student government and then I graduated and I went off to college but at age 19 I got married so
this was the 1950s when girls and young women um married very young and I got married i promised my parents I would finish college i kept my promise i carried the baby to class it was very
difficult and I always say to students my advice it's just too young to get married at 19 it'll take a little more time but um so I have three children i have five grandchildren today and I know
when I'm no longer here that my legacy will continue because my ch my children and my grandchildren will continue to tell my story and of course now I have my book um which will continue you know
the book is out out in the world and I have a special favor to ask you how many of you could tell my story to people who've never heard me wow that's wonderful because I'm a witness of
history and now that you've heard my story you all are witnesses you're all our witnesses and um you know my life was saved my life was saved by these very
courageous people who risk their own lives and I'm so very grateful for that but they didn't just save my life they saved lives of future generations so it has made me realize the importance of
the decisions and choices that we make that we all make and so I urge you to be mindful of the choices that you make and you know kindness and gratitude uh it it has a ripple effect and um so uh I urge
you to to be mindful of those and um cuz you have power to make uh the world a better place and so I hope you remember that so I thank you so much and you've been wonderful audience and if there is
time um I'm happy to answer questions and one more thing um I know it's little strange for a 90-year-old to have Instagram and Facebook accounts so I would appreciate if you could follow me thank you so
much thank you you okay couple things we're going to We have a little bit of time for some um question and answer one thing we'd like to do um I think that would be pretty impactful is we'd like to get a picture
of Janet turned around and then facing the same direction that you are so that we can get her and all of you guys into the background so if we could do that for might take us a second to kind of locate
her while we're doing so you might want to think about are there any pressing questions that you might have for her we
have four microphones set up one two three four and did you hear me say we might have books i assume that what they come see us
afterwards if they ask [Music] question but there's somebody at each of the four mics so it is okay we got that
okay so now we don't have a whole lot of time but so now that you've had a few seconds to think about whether you might have a question um again got it left right left
right so let's start uh maybe do we have some Do we have somebody at any one of the four mics that's the first person is like the hardest one because it's so brave you get up and you I can do this i can do
this uh can you if you have a question can you come to the mic so that we can all hear and a mic here it's okay be brave is Janet brave okay left first
are we ready here hello okay do we have a question let's listen uh here got it right here cute um I'm Armand Alanise from Kristen
McCall STEM Academy and my question is for you Janet if you could choose anyone who's passed away from the Holocaust what question who would it be and what would you ask them or what would you say to them if you if you could ask um another
person that did not survive the Holocaust what might yourself now uh say or want to ask oh that is hard i would say that I am so profoundly
sorry that you were not able to survive and uh I will tell your story as best as I can i will tell the world what has happened and so your memory will always be with
us yeah so for someone who didn't make it [Applause] so for someone who didn't make it she will carry on she will share the message and now you have the message and you go
out and carry on so Armando thanks Armando we have a signed book for you thank you for being the first person second floor left hopkins you're not excited is it are you back is it oh it
is on um I'm Allison Guzman from University Middle School and my question you Janet is are you still confident in your religion to this
day yes uh for a very long time I had a problem accepting my religion because I grew up hearing that it was a bad thing to be but it had been a process for me and I've come to terms and I'm very much
proud of who I am and I um practice my religion and and customs thank you [Applause]
how about first floor right over here you're good hi I'm Carla Dominguez i'm from D6 online academy um I have a question for you Janet um how did it feel that the war is over did it feel
safe or did you feel relief that nothing heavy weight is on your back well there was there was a lot of rejoicing that the war was over and certainly I was hoping to to find my
family i didn't know if I would um so and I was you know finally re reunited with my dad which was amazing because he was searching for me he had no idea where I was and took him a while to find me okay
second floor rahee uh hello uh I'm Miles from Winterrad K8 School and uh I have a question sure uh out of the four names that you told us which one was your favorite
um I think my favorite was my nickname Ga cuz that's who my whole family called Nick I think yes you had a nickname of Gj it's in the book so [Applause]
[Music] first floor left you can get Hi my name is Abby and I'm from PE Middle School and my question for you today Miss Apple Miss Applefield is um from all the things
that you went through from the past how did it affect you now i'm sorry could you say that again sorry um from all the things that you went through in the past how did it affect you now um well it has affected it me it has affected me because I'm uh very
sensitive to what is happening in the world today uh I'm feeling a little sad and disappointed uh that not enough lessons have been learned from the past so I hope that uh people will take those lessons to heart
and remember what happened and not repeat those same things another first floor right okay so um hello I am Maline Medina from D6 online school and my question is did you ever have like moments of
peace did you ever feel like this would ever get over or were you like in a dark time what was like your mental state throughout it all well there were there were times and there were periods of time when I was extremely sad and I would just cry to
myself you know at night when I went to sleep because I I always had to hide my true identity i could never be myself so I was really hiding in plain sight uh but there were other times when
I played you know I would climb trees or um I didn't I had couple books that I knew how to read read in Polish so I had couple books and I kept reading them over and over so you know there were times when I was joyful and of course
when I was with the uh Catholic family they were they were lovely and wonderful and treated me like one of their children so it was a mixed situation
[Applause] and I owe two more books over here hold on though um okay so second floor left
please oh another question you working okay hello my name is Liam Cobb i go to University Middle School um how did you manage to keep all the courage to get through the war and everything you've been through well
I always remembered my early years with my family who loved me so much and I love them so much and um those memories really kept me uh kept
me grounded so to speak uh otherwise you know the it's it's important to be hopeful no matter how difficult a situation any one of us finds themselves in it's important to keep your hope up
[Applause] um I I forget where we left off uh second floor row do we [Applause]
have a question hello hello my name is um Talon and I'm from Unrad for W and I um got a question did you guys have any pets before the work oh what yes I had pets and I also one of
the first slides that you saw that was my grandmother's dog her name was Seta and the Nazis shot that dog but I also had um I had a uh like a white sheep dog
my father bought me when I was very little yeah and I Okay I think I'm just going to do one more each corner um and then we'll see how what other time we might
have um do I leave off over here okay um are there any Oh I'm go to Mclliff but are there any traditions that you did in the war that you brought into like your modern life today
um thank you some of the maybe some of the food and some of the recipes that uh that um I remember from from the past uh I can't think of any other traditions
okay [Applause] but how about first floor right hi I'm Camille from Brenwood Middle School and my question is what inspired
you to tell your story what what what inspired you to tell your story oh so for a long time I did not I didn't I did not feel that my story was worthy because
uh because I had never been in concentration camps i thought those were the people that were the survivors i didn't see myself as a survivor but in time I realized people kept asking me to to tell the story and I started to do
that and eventually I first I started to tell the story and eventually I started to write the story and what a blessing it is that she changed her mind because she can be here with you uh second floor left
hi my name is Caris Nelton i'm from University Middle School my question for you is what were your emotions towards the American people when you arrived in America i was very excited because we always heard and read how wonderful America is
and how what a land of freedom and opportunity and the people were welcoming and it was it was just wonderful so it's second floor right [Applause]
go hey last question um hi I'm Naelli from Wintergrad K through 8 what was your favorite childhood memory my favorite memory I think was climbing
trees and there were like cherry trees and apple trees and eating cherries off the tree and uh what else did I like um I I I had like a wooden wheel with a stick that you would just hit
and to make sure that it didn't fall down that was one of the things there were no other g things to do on the farm you know oh the other thing I like to do was jump off the hoft a very high hit in the in the barn jump
down that That was about it okay here's what I would like to do is cuz I can see that we have many many more questions and I would like to get those answered for you so if you could
um write them down and get them to your teachers and then your teachers can get them to me through probably like interchool mail early college academy and then I'll get them to Janet and have
Janet respond or See you're going to see it right oh or she will answer directly if you uh ask your questions via her social media
accounts so yeah she's here she's on it okay and I have a feeling that I know what this is going to look like but we're gonna do it anyway would anybody like their picture
taken with Janet talk with your talk with your teachers they're in charge we'll try to do some group photos as much as we can it's funny
[Applause]