Special Guest, Agi Geva: Communications Week

                We can read as many books, and study as many articles, watch as many movies, and visit as many museums as we want, but there I think there is no better way to learn then from first-hand experience… and the 2^nd best way is to hear about it and learn about it from someone who has experienced it first-hand.  The Holocaust is always a sensitive topic and I am sure we have all heard different stories about it and different perspectives and learned about it in different ways. I have been to the US Holocaust Memorial Museum in D.C., and the Imperial War Museum in London, read about it in text books, and seen multiple movies about it, but nothing compares to hearing about it from Agi Geva, an 81-year old holocaust survivor from Hungary.

                Agi Geva, her mother and sister were all deported from their home to Nazi Death Camps. Geva was first sent to Auschwitz, then Plaszow, then back to Auschwitz and lived to tell her story that led up to this, during, and after the “silence.” The stories that Geva shared with our class were far beyond my realm of knowedge and were some of the most extraordinary instances of courage I have ever heard. Geva’s mother was strategically smart enough to decipher what the different selection lines meant and what they needed to do in order to stay together- which they did, the entire time.

                Her astounding personal accounts of the Holocaust are extremely rare and are a representation of strength and determination in the face of pure evil. Agi Geva currently works with the US Holocaust Memorial Museum and speaks to audiences eager to learn from her and about her personal experience. Decades passed between the end of her imprisonment and when she began to speak of her past. She did say some things she cannot remember, but the things she does, are still vivid images that she illustrates to her captive audiences. The strength and courage Geva has to recount and revisit her past is truly amazing.

                The Holocaust it not an easy topic to discuss, but it is important that we do, and that we hear from the survivors like Agi Geva while we still have the chance. My generation is one of the last generations to hear about it and learn from the generation who experienced it first-hand. Like it did mine, just hearing Geva’s story will change your life. It is up to us to continue to tell their stories and pass along their lessons and like George Santayana once said, “Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it.”