Holocaust survivor gets diploma
Esther Begam PLYMOUTH slowly raised her hand to touch the blue graduation cap resting on her head.
“It feels good,” she said, surrounded by her greatgrandchildren.
More than seven decades after the Nazis robbed her of the privilege, Begam walked into an auditorium this month to receive her high school diploma.
Begam, 88, was 11 years old in 1942 when Germany invaded her native Poland. School became a memory as she was made to work, first in a Jewish ghetto and then in a forced labor camp.
Begam’s father, a rabbi, had already left to serve as a chaplain with the Polish army and was never seen again. Her mother and younger brother were killed at the Auschwitz concentration camp. Begam’s older sister — also forced into labor — did not survive her ordeal either.
At war’s end Begam found herself alone in the world. Grandparents, uncles, aunts and cousins: “They were all gone,” Begam said.
At 17 she married another Holocaust survivor and moved to Minnesota, where she worked and raised her family.
Then, seven years ago, Be- gam was invited to share her story in teacher Candice Ledman’s class at Wayzata High School in Plymouth.
A student asked Begam to name her biggest regret.
Ledman was struck by Begam’s answer. “I expected her to say I wish we would have run, I wish we would have hidden, I wish we would have saved pictures — and she said, ‘The one thing I regret is not getting my high school diploma.’ ”
Begam’s granddaughter, Stacy Segal, a secretary at the school, sat in on the class that day. “It made me sad, just another thing she had to deal with that’s so hard to even imagine.”
Ledman approached school administration about the possibility of an honorary diploma. She said she initially was told, “It’s not something Wayzata does.”
The opportunity presented itself again when Scott Gengler took over as principal. “I wasn’t four sentences into explaining Esther’s full story and he said, ‘Absolutely, let’s do it. We need to do this.’ ”
When Begam arrived at Wayzata last week Ledman’s class had decorated an auditorium, a cake had been baked, a diploma ordered and a cap and gown laid out with her name on it.
“It’s 71 years overdue,” Gengler said.