By Staff Writer: Kate Bauer

Highlander Way Middle School’s eighth grade class wrapped up their Holocaust unit on Friday, May 2 with a presentation by Martin Lowenberg. Lowenberg, 86, is a Jewish Holocaust survivor who currently resides in Southfield, Michigan. Since 1986, he has traveled to different schools in the Midwest region sharing his stories to learning students.

“It is important for young people to know what can happen in life to innocent people,” says Lowenberg.

Before jumping into his story, Lowenberg asked the students what they knew about the word “hate” and what they thought it meant. For Lowenberg, every letter in “hate” leads to more atrocious words, such as terror, extermination, anger, and so on. To him, “hate” is the worst word in the dictionary because everything he experienced as a young boy was a result from hate.

“People say ‘I hate you’ but they don’t really know what hate means,” says Lowenberg. “I will show them what hate really is.”

The presentation included details of Lowenberg’s personal experiences during Hitler’s rise to power in Germany, his life in the ghettos, and the horrors within the various concentration camps he was located in.

“Holocaust is derived from an Ancient Greek word meaning ‘the destruction of human beings by fire’,” says Lowenberg, “and never in history has there been an event that has killed this many people.”

The week of April 28 was extremely significant for Lowenberg, for it marked the 69th anniversary of his own liberation by Swedish forces. After living with hate for over 12 years, he moved to the United States in 1945, where his surviving siblings reside. Not knowing any English, Lowenberg attended night school and, after five years, received his citizenship in Grand Rapids, Michigan.

Today, Lowenberg tells his story because he believes it is “the ultimate resistance”.

“I don’t enjoy it,” says Lowenberg about speaking his story. “I’m talking about my past experiences as a young boy as well as a Holocaust survivor.”

While traveling, he is constantly sharing his experiences because he believes it is important for students to know what people can do to others.

“People are glad they didn’t live and that time and didn’t experience this,” says Lowenberg, “but it is happening. Look anywhere in the world. Innocent people are being subject to hate.”

Lowenberg has also encountered individuals who choose to believe the Holocaust “never happened” and to those he allows history to speak for itself.

“Let them believe what they want,” responds Lowenberg, “but the truth will speak for itself and I speak the truth. History is there and you can’t deny it.”

Lowenberg, while having been a victim of hate for a majority of his childhood, refuses to retaliate.

“Why should I hate? Because the types of people I meet now I don’t have to hate.”

Having been stripped of almost everything, including loved ones, Lowenberg stressed one major point to the students, which was education.

“The one thing they could not rob was our education. The more you learn, the more you earn, and not in money,” says Lowenberg. “Learn as much as you can because no one can rob you of that.”