Holocaust Survivor Speaks to 9th Grade Religion Classes

Ann Jaffe, a Holocaust survivor, spoke to the 9th grade religion classes and other interested students and faculty on November 9. Over the last ten years, Mrs. Jaffe has visited Archmere many times, always touching her audience with the story she tells.

When she was eleven years old, the Nazis invaded her small village in eastern Poland. The executions of the Jewish population began almost immediately. Her family was initially spared because of her mother's skills as a seamstress. The family was sent to a neighboring ghetto where with unexpected help from Russian-Jewish partisans they were able to escape into the forest. They hid in the woods for twenty months, enduring cold, hunger and disease, and surviving three Nazi blockades.

On July 4,1944 they were liberated and eventually ended up in a displaced persons camp before coming to the United States. Mrs. Jaffe's message to the students is the need to practice tolerance and to stand up against hatred .Cherish democracy ; be involved.