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Show By LISSETE LANDAVERDE Reporter BROOKLYNN KILGORE | The Signpost 12 | MyWeberMedia.com| April 13, 2021 Ruth Kapp Hartz, a Holocaust survivor, was the keynote speaker for Weber State University’s Holocaust Remembrance Week on April 8. The theme for this year’s Holocaust Remembrance is “be the light in the darkness.” “It encourages everyone to reflect on the depth humanity can sink to, but also the ways individuals and communities resisted that darkness to be the light before, during and after the genocide,” Hartz said. “’Be the light in the darkness’ is an affirmation and a call to action for everyone.” Hartz wanted the keynote’s focus to be about children, given that she was a child who survived the Holocaust. One and a half million children perished during the war, making their death rates higher than those of adults since Jewish children were met with death as soon as they arrived at the concentration camps. Hartz was only four years old at the start of World War II. She was born a refugee as her Adrienne Andrews, AVP for Diversity & Chief Diversity Officer at Weber State University, offers a brief introduction parents fled Germany to immigrate to the U.S. for Ruth Kapp Hartz on April 8. Because her family could not obtain the papers needed, they instead immigrated to what At the time, Jewish people of German de- taking on fake identities and lying about their never speak about the war and their experiis now Israel and later to France when the war scent arriving in France would be considered Jewish background. ence at the camp, but her mother would show broke out. enemies despite Hitler stripping them of their Her family received fake IDs with the help of her a photo album showing their life before Only 6-7% of European Jewish children German citizenship. her father’s friend, who worked at the city hall. the war. survived. They would often be hidden in placIn the French refugee and internment Hartz was later taken to an orphanage that “By our very survival as children and our aces such as farms, barns, cellars and convents. camps, men would be given the option to join helped hide Jewish children from the police tions as adults, we have proven our enemies They had to hide their identity by coming up the French Foreign Legion, a military branch, and was able to reunite her with her parents at wrong,” Hartz said. with new names and denying all past relawith a promise to release their wives and chilthe end of the war. tionships. They also had to lie to not give away dren. Hartz’s father chose this option, and her A year after the war had ended, her famtheir own families. family moved to a rural village in France. ily moved to Paris. There the Red Cross apThese events impacted their sense of identiBecause Jewish laws imposed by Germany proached them to notify her father that none ty, including staying silent for many years after also applied to Jewish people in France, they of his family members had survived. the war. were required to wear the Star of David and Her mother’s parents were liberated from a “We had to embrace silence, seek memory, have their IDs stamped with the letter J, makconcentration camp by the Red Cross, and comprehend our identity in a morally distorting them easy to arrest. they were reunited with her family. ed, chaotic world bent on our destruction,” Comment on this story at Hartz’s family decided against this, instead Hartz’s parents and grandparents would Hartz said. signpost.mywebermedia.com |