Academics

Students meet Holocaust survivors on embedded course trip to France

In addition to hearing from survivors and experts, the students saw a number of other places of French Holocaust history. Credit: Kelly PowersAll Rights Reserved.

The College of the Liberal Arts offers a variety of embedded courses to Penn State students. Embedded courses are short-term international experiences linked to semester-long classes with related course content.

Students enrolled in FR/JST 197 France and the Holocaust in Film and Literature had the opportunity to travel to Paris during spring break. Willa Z. Silverman, the Malvin E. and Lea P. Bank Professor of French and Jewish Studies, teaches the course and led the trip, which focused on France’s involvement in the Holocaust.

France’s involvement in the Holocaust is not typically taught in schools in the United States. Between 1942 and 1944, approximately 76,000 Jews in France were deported to concentration and extermination camps. France also housed concentration camps just outside of Paris as well as in other parts of France. While these were not extermination camps, many Jews died there, and the majority were ultimately deported to Auschwitz, where they perished.

While on the trip, the students heard stories from three of the approximately 15 Auschwitz-Birkenau survivors still well enough to share their stories today.

They also had the opportunity to meet a “hidden child” — a term that refers to the thousands of Jewish children that were able to survive the Holocaust because they received protection and aid through acts of resistance, often by non-Jewish rescuers. Rachel Jedinak, the woman that Penn State students met on the trip, survived the Vel d’Hiv roundup, a French police-directed mass arrest of Jews in Paris in July of 1942. Unfortunately, her mother did not survive. During the raid, more than 13,000 Jews, including over 4,000 children, were housed in the Vélodrome d’hiver, a cycling stadium in Paris, under terrible conditions. Then, many were deported to death camps.

“The whole trip was anchored in the idea of transmitting memory when it comes to the Holocaust, or the ‘Shoah,’” explained Kelly Powers, a senior studying French and digital and print journalism. “Basically, we focused on exploring our relationship to this testimony and the fact that there are fewer and fewer survivors still speaking.”

Students like Powers reflected on meeting the survivors and stressed what a unique privilege it was to hear their stories firsthand. What Powers considered to be equally as important is that they were also able to hear the survivors’ views on what is happening in the world today.

“One of the survivors was named Esther Senot. When we asked her about anti-Semitism today, she said it reminds her of 1943. And it reminds her of the same feeling she had when the Vichy regime was in power in France,” Powers said.

Under the leadership of Marshal Philippe Pétain, the authoritarian Vichy regime replaced the Third Republic after Nazi Germany defeated France during World War II. The Vichy government collaborated with the Nazi occupy power, including in the carrying out of the Third Reich’s policies of persecution of Jews as well as others perceived as enemies of the Nazi regime.

“I don’t think what [Esther] said should be taken lightly. I absolutely believe she wouldn’t have said it if she didn’t want to send a strong message that this needs to be taken seriously now, not later,” responded Powers to Senot’s statement. “The Holocaust was not taken seriously in the beginning and one of the worst parts of it is how many people were indifferent. Don’t be that person who is indifferent.”

Another student shared Powers’ sentiments and explained how she will make sure to continue sharing the survivors’ experiences.

“Although I was heartbroken to hear one survivor explain that she felt the rise of anti-Semitism in France reminded her greatly of [the 1940s], it is something I will never forget and that fuels me to pass on her story and the story of others,” said Shara Chopra, a student studying French and Francophone studies.

In addition to hearing from the survivors, the students visited other sites of French Holocaust history, such as the French internment camp in Drancy. Another landmark they visited was Fort Mont-Valérien.

“On the top of a mountain was a military base, and it is still a military base today, but during the Nazi occupation, it was where French resistance fighters would be taken and executed,” said Powers. “Exploring this site with a guide, we saw the area where 1,008 resistance fighters were killed by Nazi soldiers.”

The trip was very impactful to the students, and the darkness of the time continues to resonate with them. Many, including Powers and Chopra, are inspired to share the survivors’ stories and address anti-Semitism today head-on.

Following the trip, Powers’ advice to students is to “recognize injustice, recognize unfair treatment, and absolutely recognize anti-Semitism.”

To learn more about liberal arts embedded courses and to see more programs, visit https://sites.psu.edu/laembeddedcourses/.

Last Updated April 3, 2019

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