[Editor’s Note: Mr. Zirgulis is a candidate for the School Board in November’s election when two seats will be decided.]
I have been been traveling in Eastern Europe to visit my sons and see relatives I have not seen in 31 years.
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I wrote this piece as a reflection of part of my journey…
On a forgotten dirt track near the tiny village of Alsedziai in Lithuania, there is a small stone marker partially hidden by overgrown grasses. The stone marker has a Star of David and indicates there is a Holocaust gravesite 300 meters along an overgrown trail at the edge of the forest.
This is where 30 women and children were slaughtered by the Nazis.
My mother was the town doctor of Alsedziai. She could not save all those innocents from the massacre. However, she did save one Jewish woman, hiding her in her closet for over two years at great risk to herself and my sister.
Instant execution was the penalty for getting caught hiding a Jew in those times.
There were other brave souls in that tiny village, including the parish priest who also helped Jews avoid the Gestapo death squads.
It is a haunting feeling walking in “killing fields” of this beautiful backcountry farmland.
One cannot forget the horrors of what happened during the Holocaust through such an experience.
It is important that we teach our schoolchildren more about what happened during the Holocaust. I was substitute teaching some 12th graders at Culver Park and was amazed how little they knew about World War I and World War II. One student said he heard about a guy named Hitler but he didn’t know who Stalin was. He thought World War I was where we fought the Japanese and World War II is when we fought the Germans.
If I am elected to School Board, I will see to it that there are more field trips for our students to the Museum of Tolerance. They have to know what has happened so it can never happen again.
Tomorrow I am off to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau.
I want to reflect and pay my respects to all the people exterminated during the Holocaust.
Mr. Zirgulis may be contacted at zirgulisr@yahoo.com
