In this photo: Elaine Geller speaking to the audience about her experience in the holocaust. She arrived in the United States at the age of nine.

Holocaust survivor speaks to the community
Ebony Bailey | 3/5/08 | News

Last year only about 20 local residents showed up to the event, this year the amount of people far surpassed the amount of people last year with about 200 local residents.

“There were 260 seats put out in the room, and the seats were almost filled up,” history teacher Natasha Efseaff said.

Efseaff was one of the people who planned and organized this event so that the whole community could hear her speak. She said one of the reasons why so many people showed up this year was because it was publicized more. She was really happy that so much more people showed up this year.

“She deserves for people to hear her story,” Efseaff said.

The evening started out with a presentation of a short film about the holocaust, and then Geller made her presentation to the audience.

Geller, age 79, is one of the youngest survivors of the holocaust.

“The average age for holocaust survivor today, is 83, 100 of us die daily, so clearly the fact, that within the next 10, 12, 13, years or maybe a little more, there will not be a first hand opportunity to talk with someone that is part of history,” Geller said to her audience.

Geller was only four years old when she was captured by the Nazis and taken to the camps, and she lived this way for five years. Her family consisted of mother, father, two older brothers, and one older sister.
At the age of four her father decided that she should be taught Christian customs by a young seminarian so that she could pass as a Christian child. The seminarian taught her Bible stories from the New Testament, Christian hymns; she had a false baptism certificate and a false birth certificate.

On the day that the Nazis came, all of the Jews were packed into the center of the town. She and her father started to head towards the Christian house, but on the way there, they noticed other Christian families giving up Jewish children to Nazi soldiers.

She said, her father noticed that, once he took her to a Christian home, the head of the household would say to the Nazis, “I don’t know who this is, it’s not my child. It must be a Jewish child who came into my home by accident.”

Geller and her father turned around and went back to the center of the town.

By the time they got back to the center of town, two of her uncles were already dead. One of her uncles had a loaf of bread, in which he hid jewelry in it. As soon as the bread dropped on the floor and the jewelry was shown, he was killed by the Nazis. Her other uncle was soon killed after that.

Her mother and grandparents were also shot right in front of her.

“We were quickly moved out of the center of town, to a small holding camp not far away,” she said. “The camp surrounded by electrified barbed wire, we were given arm band with yellow Stars of David on them, that was the very end of our freedom.”

Different family members were taken to different camps, and she did not know where they were headed at all or if she was ever going to see them again.

Since Geller was a child, she never officially got any food. Jewish people only got food if they were counted, and she wasn’t counted since she was a child. Because of this her aunt had to share her food with her.

She spent most of her days of imprisonment with her aunt by her side. She says her aunt is one of the reasons she is still alive today.

While she was imprisoned, she encountered tuberculosis, typhoid, and typhus. She stole, ate toothpaste, and drank urine; she did anything necessary to stay alive.

“If you pollute ethically and spiritually and morally, you become part of the garbage, as I did,” she said.

Once day two Nazi soldiers said her hair was too pretty for a Jewish girl, and they shaved her bald. When her aunt came back from work she saw her and began to cry. For crying, the Nazis beat her Geller’s aunt right in front of her, and then they hit Geller’s head with their fists so now she has calcified ears.

The Nazis would send big packs of German Shepherds to attack them. To this day, she still has flashbacks about being attacked.

“The physical scars are well, well healed,” Geller said. “The emotional scars are not.”

She told her audience that when she is confronted with a loose animal, she has flashbacks and once again becomes the little girl in the camp begging, screaming, pleading, and crying.

Next Geller and her aunt were crammed into boxed railroad cars and were taken to Bergen-Belson concentration camp, the same camp where Anne Frank died. She was freed by the British in this camp.

She brothers and her father survived in Czechoslovakia.  Her oldest brother placed an ad in a newspaper saying his name and that he was looking for family anywhere. Her father’s brother, who lived in Brooklyn, saw this add and recognized that it was his family name, and quickly got them off of German soil.

After her presentation, Geller accepted questions from the audience. But before she accepted the questions, she told the audience a story about how she spoke to a prison of young people, and one of the people asked “If Hilter walked in this room right now, would you want to kill him?”

She answered by saying she would want to kill him.  “If Hitler came in here, I would want to kill him, and I wouldn’t want an injection I’d want it to hurt,” she said. “But I would not let Hitler turn me into a murderer.”

Students who heard her speak felt enlightened and inspired.

“I feel like humbling myself now,” Granite Hills student Alex Lopez.

She is going to speak again at Granite Hills today, so students who want to hear her speak should go to the cafeteria during seventh period.