by Aimee Farquharson

“We cannot forget about the Holocaust,” said Holocaust survivor Janet Singer Applefield when she spoke to civics and English students on February 14. Applefield speaks to promote awareness of the dangers of prejudice and violence. She wants people to understand that everyone “has a responsibility to stand up to any kind of injustice.” The ninth grade Civics/English course is designed to study different kinds of injustice in the world, and how every person has the power to stop it.

When Applefield was a child she lived in Poland in a small village. When the war hit she was four years old and her family decided to flee to Russia. The Russians told all the fleeing Jews that if they wanted to stay they had to become citizens. Her parents were afraid that if they stayed they would never be able to leave and go back to their home, so they started to head back for Poland.

When they arrived there the family was sent to a ghetto; Applefield’s parents helped her to escape to the home of her mother’s friend Maria. She treated her very poorly and one day left her alone in the city and never came back. Because Applefield was a blonde-haired, blue-eyed child she could get away with pretending she was not Jewish.

A woman found her in the city alone and put her in an orphanage where she grew up until the war was over. Her father eventually found her there, and she moved to the United States with him in her late teens. Her other family members were all killed.

When a student asked Applefield if she could ever forgive the men who were involved in the Holocaust, she paused to think about what to say and then told the young man, “Forgive is difficult, but I will never forget it.”