While small in stature, Dr. Eva Olsson’s presence commands the whole room to stand up and take notice.
On Tuesday morning, her presence was so strong it silenced a gymnasium full of teenagers and held them captivated as she told her story.
Dr. Olsson, 91 is a holocaust survivor. Teacher Lynn Hemming arranged for her to address students in Drumheller at DVSS and St. Anthony’s as well as other schools throughout the area. She brought a message of hope coming from a story of extreme hardship.
She was a teen in Hungary when the Nazi’s occupied, living in Satu Mare, a ghetto where upwards of 24,000 Jewish people lived in just six blocks.
In 1944, under the belief that they were being sent from to a brick-making factory, the ghetto was liquidated in six transports. The residents were loaded into railcars taking her and her family to Auschwitz-Birkernau, the site of the most horrific war crimes in history.
Getting off the train, they were told to line up and they were sorted by the ‘Angel of Death’ Josef Mengele. Mothers and children were murdered within two hours of arrival, 10 per cent were spared for slave labour. She was not able to say goodbye to her mother.
It took 20 minutes to die, and the pall of black smoke, from the burning of corpses hung in the air.
She lost 87 members of her family, and while she was in one of the most notorious camps in history, she eventually was transported from Poland into Germany. First, she was taken to a camp near Dusseldorf, and then to Bergen-Belsen, the camp where Ann Frank perished. Prisoners were transported further into Germany as the Red Army advanced from the East.
This too was a living hell. The building she was lodged in burned and many of the women were forced to live in a cave. Typhus and dysentery were rampant and even after liberation in April of 1945 thousands perished, despite efforts to treat and nourish the prisoners.
After liberation, her life began again in Sweden and then Canada.
Through her hardship, the lesson she learned was simple and beautiful.
“I would hope that some of you, if not all of you, know the meaning of the Golden Rule. Do unto others as you would want them to do unto you. I guarantee there won’t be bullying in your school, it is that simple really,” she said. “It can be simple if we are not all preoccupied with the sapital “I.” Life isn’t about “I”, it isn’t about me, it’s about we, together. That is the only way that this generation in front of me will ever achieve peace.”
