A 101-year-old Holocaust survivor has been using her experience to ensure that the lessons of the genocide are not forgotten. She has given countless interviews and shared firsthand insight on the experience at Auschwitz.
101-year-old Auschwitz survivor on mission against hate
Ginette Kolinka, a 101-year-old Auschwitz survivor, has become a hero against hate in France. She has been sharing her experience of Auschwitz, highlighting her firsthand experiences of murderous hate and inhumanity.
She has now attended countless interviews so that the lessons of the Holocaust are not forgotten. She does this so people who tune into her interviews cannot say they do not know about the death camp and the elimination of 6 million Jews.
Initially, Ginette hesitated to share her experience of Auschwitz. She developed a stock answer to shut down those who asked her about her experience of the Nazi camp.
‘If I had a child, well, I would prefer to strangle them with my own hands than make them go through what I went through,’ she would say then.
However, she credits Stephen Spielberg’s movie, Schindler’s List, for precipitating her decision 30 years ago to open up. She has since been open about the mental and physical scars that she buried for decades.
She has also spoken about the survivor’s guilt that tormented her. She regrets not kissing her father and 12-year-old brother goodbye before the Nazis sent them to the gas chambers.
After releasing Schindler’s List, Spielberg launched a foundation to collect testimonies from Holocaust survivors. The foundation also reached out to Ginette Kolinka.
When the interviewer sat down with her in 1997, her memories flowed for almost three hours. The foundation says it has collected about 60,000 testimonies and is still gathering more.
Holocaust survivor visits high schools to share her experience
Ginette Kolinka recently visited Marcelin Berthelot High School, east of Paris, to share her story. She spoke about her arrest in March 1944 to her return to France, traumatised after Germany’s surrender.
She spoke about how the Nazis packed her and other Jews into windowless animal transport wagons in Paris. Guards treated them with violence and cruelty while barking dogs greeted them at the gates of Auschwitz.
“The Nazis’ hatred of Jews was such that they hunted for every detail that could make us suffer, humiliate us,” she said.
At the time, she was a 19-year-old, and the students listened in silence as she continued to share her story. Just 2500 Jews from France, out of 76000, survived the concentration camps.