"The minute I saw her I knew I would love her." "She was so inspirational." "I feel like I can get through anything after listening to her speak." "I'm so happy I got to give her a hug." "I learned more than any book or teacher could have ever taught me." "It truly touched my heart about such an inspirational story." "I was very inspired never to give up whether for your life or anything else. This is one of the things that I will never forget." “I am inspired to talk more with my grandparents.” These are just some of the comments from Charles H. Bullock School’s fifth graders after hearing Fran Malkin’s Holocaust Survival Story.
Ms. Malkin was born in Poland in 1938. In 1939, Russia occupied her town. Under Communist rule, her family’s properties were taken away and strangers occupied their home. In spring 1941, Germany invaded Poland. When they came into Sokal, all Jewish able-bodied men were ordered to the town square to report for labor duty. Her father was among the men who were taken to a brick factory and executed. Fran was two years old.The family was later forced into a ghetto, an area surrounded by barbed wire, which restricted movement of Jews. In the fall of 1942, the family went into hiding. They were among sixteen people who were hidden for two years in the hayloft of a barn by Francisca Halamajowa. Their story can be seen in the documentary film “No. 4 Street of Our Lady.”
Now 85, Ms. Malkin shared with students how she survived, was liberated, and spent three years in a displaced persons camp in Austria, before arriving in Newark, New Jersey as a 10-year-old, not speaking a word of English. Much of her information comes from a diary her uncle kept, which was translated from Yiddish into English.
The fifth graders have been studying the Holocaust with their Language Arts Teacher Greg McGrath. To prepare for Malkin's presentation, McGrath taught them about antisemitism, the history of the Holocaust and her story.
This comment from a Bullock fifth grader shows Ms. Malkin’s impact: “After hearing her speak, my problems seem so tiny. I think that it’s so important that the next generation, and just people in general, learn about the Holocaust, and how brutal, and wrong it was, so that people in the future never make the same mistake.”