Holocaust Survivor Tells His Tale to Thwart Bullying

Dozens of middle school student leaders attended the Joseph M. Barry Career and Technical Educational Center in Westbury last Tuesday to hear 83-year-old Holocaust survivor Werner Reich speak. The event was sponsored by the Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County located in Glen Cove.

Reich gave a first-hand account of the Holocaust before students broke up into small groups to discuss what they learned and talk about what they would bring back to their schools.

Throughout his account, Reich discussed the importance of not being a bystander, but being an "up stander."

"The good people did nothing," he reiterated throughout his talk.

Reich explained how Hitler came to power and how orders were written to make what they were doing look legal.

"They arrested people of color and sent them to jails and camps," he said. "He lined up gypsies and shot them. Doctors and nurses helped in the murder of 250,000 citizens because, according to the government, they were not worth living. These were people with handicaps, epileptics, mentally retarded and other disabled people."

Reich discussed how he was a teenager in Yugoslavia when the Germans attacked. He was taken to a concentration camp where the guards had competitions to see who could cut the most throats.

The talk was designed to not only teach the children about the atrocities of the Holocaust, but also to promote better understanding of how to react and intervene with bullying. 

"The mission of the center is to use the lessons of the Holocaust to promote tolerance, non-violence and understanding," said Michelle Pinto director of media relations for the center. "We use what we've learned about the Holocaust to promote a peaceful future."

Pinto's philosophy was exactly what the students took away with them.

"I'll go back to my school and tell them how the Nazis were bad to the Jews," said 11-year-old Hussain Ali Kackry, a sixth-grader at Martin Avenue Elementary School in Bellmore. "The kids were getting killed for no reason. They had to live in their own filth. A tremendous number of people got killed."

Kackry knows exactly what he would do when he sees bullying from his own experience at school.

"I was being bullied because I'm Muslim," he said. "I was being called a terrorist. I stood up for myself. A group of people told the principal. Those people never bullied me again."

Victoria Curoso, a sixth-grader at Newbridge Road School in Bellmore, also learned a valuable lesson: "It doesn't matter what people look like," she said. "You shouldn't judge people. You're just as bad as the bully if you don't stand up."