A Holocaust Seminar with Special Guest Lou Parisi

A Holocaust Seminar with Special Guest Lou Parisi

On April 22, 2016 the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School students participated in a history seminar remembering the Holocaust. The students created presentations that spoke about this dark time in history. For instance, their presentations consisted of the causes and effects of the Holocaust, poems of Holocaust survivors, and the special diary of Anne Frank.  Attending this event was World War II veteran Lou Parisi.

Causes that the students spoke about dealt with how the Holocaust was created from numerous concentration camps that tortured and killed the Jewish people. In addition, they also mentioned that the person responsible for this horrific crime against humanity was Germany’s dictator, Adolf Hitler.

The effects that the students spoke about brought to the attention of how the survivors had even more challenges because many were starving and had serious diseases. Even though the Holocaust was over, the survivors had to overcome these problems and reestablish their lives without their loved ones and friends.

One of the poems the students presented was by Barbara Sonek. The poem read:

We played, we laughed
we were loved.
We were ripped from the arms of our
parents and thrown into the fire.

We were nothing more than children.
We had a future.

We were going to be lawyers, rabbis, wives, teachers, mothers.

We had dreams, then we had no hope.

We were taken away in the dead of night like cattle in cars, no air to breathe smothering, crying, starving, dying.

Separated from the world to be no more.

From the ashes, hear our plea.

This atrocity to mankind can not happen again.

Remember us, for we were the children whose dreams and lives were stolen away.

After the poems like this were read, the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Middle School students presented the diary of Anne Frank. Anne Frank and her family were in hiding for two years from the Nazi’s. Unfortunately, they were discovered and brought to concentration camps. The only one who survived was Anne Frank’s father, Otto Frank.

After the students’ presentations, WWII veteran Lou Parisi spoke to the students about how the world needs to come together and have everlasting peace so that a time such as the Holocaust never happens again.

The students responsible for putting together this event were Kayla Byrd, Daniele Delgado, Viridiana Jacobo, Perfecto Kendle, Tatiana Laurore, Christlie Lavarin, Oscar Limon Vasquez, Rodney Loiseau, ShyAsya Parker, Oswaldo Pelaez, Ali Salahedin, Deicie Vasquez, Marc Kenley St. Surin, and Andrit Garnica.

Mr. Tim Mason, sixth grade science teacher, and his students created questions for Lou Parisi’s presentation.