Asbury Park Holocaust Lessons with Stories and Virtual Reality

Seven minutes of reading

ASBURY PARK. When Manfred Lindenbaum was still a child, his world was turned upside down.

He was born into a Jewish family in Unn, Germany, in 1932, and still remembers when things began to change. “My family in Germany had more Christian friends than Jewish friends. But what happened when the Nazis seized power, the so-called free elections?” Lindenbaum asked. “No one was angry with us, but one by one they turned away.”

Lindenbaum, who now lives in Jackson, and another Holocaust survivor, Fred Hayman of Morristown, spoke to freshmen and sophomores about their experiences as Jews Oct. 29 in a Holocaust, Genocide and Human Rights class at Asbury Park High School children in Nazi Germany.

It also marked the coming anniversary of Kristallnacht, the “night of broken glass” of the Nazi attack on November 9-10, 1938, in which hundreds of synagogues in Germany were destroyed, thousands of Jewish businesses were looted, and tens of thousands of Jews were arrested and sent to concentration camps, which became harbinger of the coming full holocaust.

As part of the event, a demonstration was also held “Inside Kristallnacht”, a mixed virtual reality project created by the Claims Conference.

“There was nowhere to go”

“My story begins on October 28 (1938), two weeks before Kristallnacht. 17,000 of us gathered in Germany,” said Lindenbaum. “They talked about us as (inferior people) and it amazes me that anyone can look at another person and think that they are inferior to them.

“People who think like that are inferior,” he added.

Lindenbaum recalled how his father’s store was tagged and how soon after that his family became poor. None of their acquaintances had a car, so they could not leave.

“If we got on the bus, there was nowhere to go, all the seats were closed,” Lindenbaum said. “There were places where people stood up at first and said, ‘No, that’s wrong.’ They spoke. People survived in those places.”

But millions of others simply stood by.

“You stand by and bad things happen. That doesn’t mean you rush in and start fighting, that’s not the answer. The answer is, do something, say something, find someone, and you can change the world,” Lindenbaum said. “You are changing the world in your school, in your family, in your community. Even at the national level, speaking out.”

Lindenbaum remembered not being able to start school because it was too dangerous. His older brother was beaten up at school, but his mother was told by a teacher that there was nothing she could do. He said if more people in that teacher’s situation had spoken up instead of doing nothing, “we would be a different world.”

He added: “just remember when you don’t do anything, it just grows and you’re part of the problem.”

“I smelled burning”

During Heyman’s speech, he emphasized to the students that while it’s okay to not like things, whether it’s food or the president, it’s okay to hate because “it reinforces its application. This is what is happening in the world today.” Geiman was born in Berlin in 1929, when the country was still a democratic republic. Only four years later, after an election in which less than half of the population voted, Adolf Hitler was appointed chancellor, and the Nazis began to consolidate power.

“Forty-five percent of the people turned out. We don’t know how many (anti-Hitler) votes were destroyed,” Gaiman said.

Kristallnacht for Gaiman began as another school day with a two-mile walk past shops and businesses.

“This morning we saw that during the night the Nazis destroyed all Jewish enterprises, Jewish shops. They did graffiti, chalk, paint on the windows,” Gaiman said.

The teachers did not want to alarm the students, so no one talked about it at school.

“The storefronts that were boarded up, the next night … they were all smashed and I walked through the broken glass to school,” Heyman said. “I came to school. … I smelled burning.”

He saw fire trucks, but they were there to protect the neighborhood, not fight the fire. The policeman told Geiman to go home, calling him something anti-Semitic in German, before telling Geiman that there would be no school that day.

“When I looked up, I saw that my synagogue was on fire. Where I would have my bar mitzvah,” Heyman said.

He asked the students, “How do you think I felt when I saw this?” One student answered, “Boda.”

Heyman said with a smile, “I was thrilled.”

“No school! I was thrilled. I was a kid,” he said. “I always bring it up because it’s an unpleasant story, so I add humor to it. My school was cut off when I was in the third grade. … The Nazis did not allow Jews to go to school.”

Tuesday’s event gave students a chance to experience “Inside Kristallnacht” virtual reality project. Users get to know the personal story of Dr. Charlotte Knobloch, how she survived from Kristallnacht to the end of the Holocaust.

“Every year there are fewer and fewer survivors who can share their memories of the Holocaust, and knowing that the lessons they have to share will outlast any of us gives me hope for the future and gives me a sense that these lessons will not be lost,” Knobloch said in an on-board message.

Knobloch was born in 1932 in Munich. In virtual reality, she recalls the night of Kristallnacht, when, as a 6-year-old, she walked with her father through the terribly troubled streets.

This virtual reality project integrates real-life footage, photos, music and other audio from Kristallnacht into the hand-drawn world of Knobloch’s story. Users can participate in an interactive Q&A with Knobloch, in which language processing technology can match pre-recorded answers to user questions.

While some students checked it out, others crowded around Lindenbaum and Gaiman to ask questions.

Sophomore Moriah Wilson asked Gaiman if he ever played sports, to which he replied simply, “No, I wasn’t allowed to,” a sobering reminder of how much humanity was denied to the Jewish people under the Nazis.

“How can you kill a child?”

Several students asked Lindenbaum about his family, so he told them about the worst day of his life.

“Amid the chaos, we were gathered and taken to the border. Then with weapons and dogs they chased us by the thousands to Poland. The Polish guards tried to prevent us from entering, but there were too many of us,” Lindenbaum. said

His fondest memory of that time was when an aid organization brought them cloth bags.

“You know a cloth bag matters when you’re sleeping on the floor of a cold building. We put straw in there and we had a mattress. It made a difference,” Lindenbaum said.

He added that “it wasn’t all that terrible for me as a little kid” despite being without electricity, heat and toilets for 10 months.

“But then we were separated, my family, they were killed. My sister was killed. I still can’t come to terms with my sister. How can you kill a child? They killed one and a half million children. “

Students crowded around the two survivors, asking questions and listening intently until staff forced them to resume the school day.

The Claims Conference, which organized the event, is a non-profit organization with offices in New York, Israel, Germany and Austria that provides financial compensation to Holocaust survivors worldwide. Founded in 1951, the Claims Conference negotiates and allocates funds to individuals and organizations, and seeks the return of Jewish property stolen during the Holocaust.

Charles Day is an Asbury Park and Neptune metro reporter focusing on diversity, equity and inclusion. @CharlesDayeAPP Contact him: [email protected]