Not just one week of the year
For junior psychology and sociology major Rachel Ptaszek, Holocaust awareness lasts longer than just a week out of the year.
“I feel that every day I am living through being a Holocaust offspring,” Ptaszek said.
The theme of this year Holocaust Awareness Week focuses on how the Holocaust affects subsequent generations.
Holocaust Awareness Week began Feb. 26 and goes to Feb. 28.
“I love learning about the Holocaust and the War. I think it’s important for people to know,” Ptaszek said.
Ptaszek’s paternal grandmother Anne Ptaszek, a Holocaust survivor, has lived in Minneapolis, Minn., since 1949. She was 16 years old when she entered the concentration camps and was liberated at age 21.
“I hope no one has to go through what I went through. I think about what happened all the time,” Anne Ptaszek said. “It should have never happened. I am very bitter because of it but I know I am lucky to have survived.”
It wasn’t until the end of World War II that Anne Ptaszek met her husband, another survivor, Samuel Ptaszek. Anne Ptaszek gave birth to Larry Ptaszek, Rachel’s father in Germany and then moved to the U.S. in 1949 and had two more children.
“My grandmother was the eldest of seven children and since her parents were killed before being taken away to the concentration camps, she felt responsible for her siblings,” Ptaszek said. “Family is more important to her than anything else.”
Of the seven children, five survived and were fortunate enough to stay together throughout World War II. Anne Ptaszek is the only one who is open and willing to discuss her experience.
“I will talk to anyone who has questions because I think it is important not to forget what happened 60 years ago. I hope it never happens in the next generation,” Anne Ptaszek said.
Anne Ptaszek and her siblings spent their childhood on internment camps. They worked on ammunition farms.
Anne Ptaszek said she was very upset because she didn’t realize that Hitler was going to kill all the Jews in Poland and all she wanted to do was find her family.
“At the end of the war my grandma designated a place to meet all her siblings in case they all got separated for whatever reason,” Ptaszek said. “They went there when they were liberated, along with hundreds of other people and were given clothes, food and shelter until they could figure out what to do.”
Anne Ptaszek is not one of the speakers coming to CU, but she does have her story to share with her granddaughter.
“We are extremely close, she always tells my brother and I that we are the pride and joy of her life,” Ptaszek said.
The Ptaszek family eats dinner together every year on Jan. 17 to celebrate the day the British liberated the Jews. When the Holocaust started, there were 6.5 million Jews; when it ended, there were 900,000.
“She is my role model,” Ptaszek said. “Whenever I am going through something I always think to myself, it cannot be as difficult as what she went through, along with hundreds and thousands of others. I truly feel that we need to keep this memory alive.”
Holocaust Awareness Week coordinator and sophomore history major Amy Leszman said survivors’ stories are a large part of the week’s activities.
“Students should expect to hear raw stories from these survivors,” Leszman said. “They are like motivational speakers.”
Leszman said she has seen community members and students alike at the events.
“This is a large piece of history and students need to know what happened because it’s still around, it has not gone away,” she said.
contact Campus Press Staff Writer Katelyn Bell at katelyn.bell@colorado.edu.
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