Holocaust survivor's story told

Itka Zymuntowicz spoke about living in a Polish ghetto and at Auschwitz. Itka Zymuntowicz spoke about living in a Polish ghetto and at Auschwitz.by Alicia SimmonsItka Zymuntowicz spoke about living in a Polish ghetto and at Auschwitz.by Alicia SimmonsThe Daily Pennsylvanian Her mother then followed the officer to her doomed fate. These were the last words that Zymuntowicz would ever hear from her mother, her best friend. Through anecdotes, poems, songs and tears, Zymuntowicz, a Holocaust survivor from Poland, related her harrowing three-year experience in a Nazi concentration camp yesterday to a classroom of 25 Penn undergraduates enrolled in the Jewish Renaissance Project's seminar, "The Future of Holocaust Commemoration." Organized by two JRP fellows, College sophomore Ariel Groveman and Wharton junior Cory Perlstein, and JRP coordinator Geoff Menkowitz, the goal of the course is to promote the awareness of the Holocaust through usage of alternative learning methods as well as testimonies from survivors such as Zymuntowicz. Zymuntowicz was only 13 years old when the Nazis converted her Polish town into a ghetto. Each member of her family, which consisted of four living generations, was shipped to numerous concentration camps in Eastern Europe -- a trek she referred to as the "Death March." Zymuntowicz lived in an impoverished, unsanitary ghetto from 1941 to 1942. There, she saw the religious leaders from her town captured and sent to camps and witnessed the burning of synagogues and the closing of Jewish schools and social centers. As a prisoner, she was not allowed to leave her confined area and was forced to partake in chores like scrubbing sidewalks with toothbrushes. When testifying of her experience at Auschwitz, she pointed to what she called her "Badge of Honor," the numerical tattoo branded on her left forearm by the Nazis as a form of identification. "I wear my number proudly, for I am a proud Jewish woman," Zymuntowicz said. "I don't hate anyone. What good would that do? But not holding hatred is not the same as forgiveness." Disguised to her -- and hundreds of thousands of other Jews -- as a pleasant trip to a better living community, the Nazis transported Itka to Auschwitz in 1942, where she remained until 1945. The hardships she endured there ranged from forced nudity to inflicted tattoo markings. Her mental weariness and physical illness consumed her over time and brought her to a point, she said, where she no longer cared about life. It was not until the Swedish Red Cross rescued her from the camp that she stopped hoping for death and started applying her experience to better her outlook on life. Zymuntowicz vowed to herself while in the camp that, if she was ever freed, she would "bear witness" to the six million Jews -- both those close to her and those she did not know -- who died in the Holocaust. And she has kept her word. She still serves on two committees of Holocaust survivors. She appeared in two Holocaust documentaries and was even interviewed by director Steven Spielberg for his Academy Award-winning film Schindler's List. Zymuntowicz acknowledged that the Holocaust will "affect me for the rest of [my] life." Indeed, it is because of the Holocaust that she remains the sole survivor of four generations of her family and that her children have no aunts, uncles or grandparents with whom to share their lives. Nevertheless, Zymuntowicz said she refuses to let her experience at Auschwitz consume her. "Survivors never give up on life," she said.