Last week we invited the Israeli Ambassador to Serbia, Arthur Koll to come speak to our students for Holocaust Remembrance Day. Mr. Koll gave a great speech that had all of our students silent for over 3o minutes. Quite an accomplishment!
Both of Mr. Koll’s parents are Holocaust survivors and he talked of his childhood after he immigrated to Israel from Romania. I took alot out of the speech, but especially when he asked the question, why have a special day for the Holocaust, when there were other genocides throughout history. His answer made me think. He pointed out the science of the Nazis that determined the “inferior” race of the Jews, among others, and the systematic obsession to eliminate them, all of them. Mr. Koll told of towards the war’s end, when the Nazis knew they were losing, they still continued to divert precious resources, like trains, to deliver Jews to the death camps instead of using them to transport troops along the Russian front. He also mentioned a concentration camp in Poland, that is mostly forgotten to history, because it wasn’t a work and death camp, but only an elimination camp. No one ever sent to the camp, lived to tell about it.
6 million Jews were murdered by the Nazi Empire. The Ustase Quisling regime here in Serbia had some concentration camps that I would like to know more about. I am shown above thanking Mr. Koll for coming to speak.