Schools
Holocaust Survivor Talks to Rye HS Students
Rye Brook resident Sel Hubert shared his harrowing memories of Nazi Germany with students at Rye High School last Thursday.
Sel Hubert settles into his chair and gets ready to revisit the most horrific time in his life. He's done it many times before, and on this day he'll do it for the students of Rye High School. Hubert will tell the students all about his childhood; how Germany became a Nazi dictatorship and his family was torn asunder because they were Jewish.
Hubert, a retired consultant, has lived in Rye Brook for 42 years and has been talking about his experiences in Nazi Germany for the last 30 years. He does it for two reasons: to bear witness against Holocaust deniers and because he thinks connecting with a survivor is one of the best ways to teach young people about human rights.
"The best way to teach is to see through the eyes of one person," said Hubert.
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As the young students come into the room, a few of them come forward to introduce themselves and shake Hubert's hand. They watch his every move, surreally aware of Hubert's direct connection to a time they have only read about in books.
The chorus room fills with young people who fall quiet as Hubert describes the pervasive spread of Nazism. As the political party took over the country, even Hubert's father was caught off guard by the wave of anti-semitism that took over their previously tolerant village.
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"My father thought sooner or later they'd see the Nazis were hoodlums," said Hubert. "Overnight we became second citizens."
Cast out from their schools and businesses, Hubert says it wasn't until his father was arrested during the horrific violation of Kristallnacht in 1938 that their family came to realize they could be separated forever. His parents made the heart-wrenching decision to send first his sister, then Hubert himself to England in the Kindertransport.
On the one hand grateful for his parents' decision to save his sister and himself from the tumult and uncertainty their country had devolved, Hubert described the moment of saying farewell to his father amongst a sea of children being sent away from Germany by their parents at the Munich train station as "the terrible feeling of being absolutely alone in the world."
By 1944, Hubert came to the United States and joined the Air Force, in part to gain American citizenship. He had lost contact with his parents and his relatives had sent him a message through the International Red Cross that said his "parents had gone on a trip." Eventually, the International Red Cross got word to Hubert that his parents had been lost; but it took more than 50 years and a trip to the Holocaust Museum in Washington, DC for Hubert to find the details of their demise in a secret file.
Instead of succumbing to bitterness, Hubert says he has done his best to look for meaning and redemption. His sister survives, and he has lived a fulfilling life with his wife, also a Holocaust survivor.
"Don't let the low points of your life govern your life," Hubert told the students. He described the powerful emotions he felt returning to Germany and his childhood village. He visited the very same classroom where he had been spit upon and kicked as a child.
On this occasion, more than half a century later, the village came together to honor the memories of its Jewish citizens lost to hate and violence. At a powerful ecumenical service, Hubert says he gathered all his strength to pray in Hebrew for the memory of his parents and the millions of other Jewish people violently sacrificed to intolerance.
It is this moment of triumph that Hubert uses to make his strongest point to the young people.
"I tell them to be upstanders, not bystanders," said Hubert with emphasis. "The 6 million who died, need to be remembered."
