Holocaust survivor tells of her ‘childhood lost’
As 150 fifth-graders sat silently enraptured, Boca Raton resident Zelda Fuksman, 79, recounted the harrowing tale of a childhood spent as the youngest member of Jewish family on the run from Nazis in her native Poland.
“It was an evil time in history. They were shooting at us on the train and we had to jump off and hide in the nearby forest,” said Fuksman, who was 4 when Germany invaded her home country in 1939. “I was so scared. The noise, the flashing, the shooting. I said to my daddy, ‘Cover my head.’ ”
Fuksman, who represents the Palm Beach County organization Child Survivors/Hidden Children of the Holocaust, was speaking to the students Monday at Sandpiper Shores Elementary School in West Boca Raton.
She estimates she travels more than 2,000 miles a year talking to students at dozens of schools around the state on behalf of her group’s 140-plus members. She’s also edited a pair of books documenting stories of childhood innocence lost during the Holocaust.
“I’m not doing this for me,” she said. “I’m not looking for publicity. My motivation is to teach them to be better people, to stand strong and fight injustice and bullying.”
Fuksman, her older brother and parents were some of the lucky ones, able to evade the Nazis throughout World War II, thanks to the help of good Samaritans. Her family came to Chicago in 1949 and she settled in Boca to retire 18 years ago.
“It is history to you, we lived through it. We’re the last witnesses,” Fuksman said. “As a child, you didn’t know about hope, you didn’t know about giving up. You lived to survive.”
However, many of her family and friends didn’t survive. She estimates losing dozens of relatives and countless numbers of friends in Nazi concentration camps.
“I speak for my lost 6 million,” she said, referring to the total estimated amount of Jews killed during the genocide.
Although South Florida has one of the highest percentages of Holocaust survivors in the United States, their aging population has been dwindling in recent years, making her message even more poignant.
“There is an urgency, and many survivors are not interested to talk,” she said.
Her message was not lost on McKenzie Cassidy, 10, who asked Fuksman for her autograph after her speech.
“It’s sad how her family suffered,” Cassidy said. “It makes me feel lucky to have what I have.”
Erin Filla, 11, was larly touched.
“I learned a lot about how she was treated, about how a lot of people were tortured and killed. We’re all different and it shouldn’t matter about our race,” she said.
Sandpiper Shores librarian and media specialist Michelle Gunning arranged for Fuksman to speak to her students.
“They got the message loud and clear,” Gunning said. “This is not something they’ll soon forget.”
At the end of her speech, Fuksman had one request of the students: “You know what you can do for me?” Fuksman asked. “You can help me build a better world.”
simi- platzman@tribpub.com, 561-243-6634 or Twitter and Instagram @PhilLatzman.