OVERLAND PARK, Kan. — To commemorate Holocaust Remembrance Day, Jewish Family Services hosted an intergenerational lunch where survivors were able to share their stories and inspire students from the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy to be a beacon of kindness.
“You learn how to read between the lines, you learn how to survive," said Mariann Birger, a holocaust survivor. "People learned how to survive in concentration camps — life goes on."
Birger was born in Odessa, Ukraine, in 1938 right before the start of World War II.
Three months prior to her birth, her father, who was a political refugee from Romania, was killed in the hands of the Nazis for being a political immigrant in Russia.
Birger says an older lady came to evacuate her family from their apartment because they were associated with an “enemy of the state.”
But after seeing that they had a young child, their lives were spared.
It was only after the war that she was able to find out what happened to her father’s side of the family. They were all killed in the concentration camps in Odessa, Ukraine.
“I didn’t know any truth about my father until Stalin died,” Birger said. “We never actually discovered what truly happened with him.”
After years of horror and persecution, she left Odessa to find freedom in the United States.
Today, she is alive and here to tell her story to the next generation of Jewish descendants.
“We were ready to drop everything without knowing what we will meet in another part of the world,” Birger said. "I saw light over Kansas City sky, it was incredible feeling that we’re home.”
Alongside other survivors, Birger hopes to inspire students from the Hyman Brand Hebrew Academy to spread love and trust in the midst of hatred.
“Just to hear it from someone who’s gone through so much and then to have learned that all it takes it that, just to be kind, is just a stark reminder of that message,” said Leonardo Aptilon, an 8th grader at the school. “It just felt like they had a certain perspective or experience that I could really learn from — it was very humbling to me.”
As one of the first Jewish immigrants in Kansas City, Birger went onto become the matriarch of her family.
Now, her story can live on through her granddaughter who lives through, and fights against, a similar kind of hate.
“When you hold those beliefs close to your heart and people are attacking either because of those beliefs, or really under the guise of them hating beliefs but really wanting to spread hate, it hurts the same either way," Amanda Birger said. "It damages communities the same either way."
Birger says today, she is feeling peace. And that peace comes from knowing just how much kindness existed even in war and now.
“I couldn’t believe how many people want to be help, how many people opened their door, opened their heart to make us feel at home,” Birger said.
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