Holocaust survivor Rosalie Lebovic Simon speaks at South Side High School

Rosalie Lebovic Simon, a Holocaust survivor from what was then-Czechoslovakia and who now lives in Floral Park, visited South Side High School last week to talk with students about her experiences and the reported increase in antisemitism on Long Island.

Simon was the youngest of six children. When she was 11, she was expelled from school and required to wear a yellow star, to identify her Jewish heritage. In April 1944, during Passover, her family was told to pack up their belongings and ordered to leave their home in Teresva, located in present-day Ukraine.

“The next day, we each packed our own bags of clothes and family pictures,” Simon told an audience of South Side seniors. “We left our house in tears, leaving behind all of our life-saving possessions and wondering if we are ever coming back to our home again.”

Her family was deported to an overcrowded ghetto in Hungary, and forced to sleep in a cemetery. After a few days, they moved into an attic with some other families.

“Living conditions there were most difficult — especially listening to the cries of hungry children,” Simon recounted. “They did not provide any food for us. We only had the little bit of food we brought from home, but at least we had a roof over our heads.”

She recalled walking down the street one day when a man suddenly stopped her, produced a pair of scissors and cut her hair. “I cried and screamed,” Simon said, “but he would not stop until all my hair was cut off.”

Eight weeks later, her family was transported in a cattle car to the Nazi concentration camp Auschwitz-Birkenau. There, she and her mother were separated from her father, her four sisters and her brother.

Simon was considered too young for labor, and her mother, who was 45 at the time, was considered too old, so they were put into a line for the gas chamber. They tried to get out of the line, but SS guards stopped them. During the commotion, Simon managed to escape, but she never saw her mother again.

She later learned that her 13-year-old brother had also died in the gas chamber.

“It is now 80 years later,” she said, “and the memories of them and how they died remains an everlasting pain in my heart.”

Simon was later reunited with her sisters in the barracks where they lived in squalid conditions with no food or water. One day, they were forced to line up to be examined by Dr. Josef Mengele, who would decide whether they were fit to do physical labor or would go to the gas chamber.

Simon once again found herself facing death, and once again managed to escape, thanks to a young woman who sacrificed her life to help Simon escape with her sisters.

She would later write about her experience in the camp, as well as the labor camps in which Jews were forced to make munitions for the Nazi forces, in her memoir, “Girl in a Striped Dress.”

In 1945, near the end of World War II, Simon was among those who were liberated by American troops, and she reunited with her father. They returned to Prague, only to find their community desolate. She would later move to the United States, where she settled in Baltimore.

Her South Side listeners, captivated by her story, were eager to ask about her experience, and about the rise in antisemitism today.

Simon’s message was a simple one. “To have hate is such a terrible thing,” she told the students. “Hate is poison. It doesn’t serve any purpose.”

She advised the young people to speak up whenever there is injustice, and to tell the world about it.

Cynthia Vitere, South Side’s History Department facilitator, said she wanted students to hear Simon’s story, and to actively engage in a discussion about the Holocaust and antisemitism in the world today.

“I think it’s really important for kids,” Vitere said. “We spend so much time looking at historical texts, movies and documents. It’s different when you actually see someone and hear their testimony.”

The seniors had thought-provoking questions not only about Simon’s experience, but also about what is going on in the world now.

“Given all the challenges, the rise of authoritarianism around the world, the rise of hate in the United States, I think it’s really important for the kids to not just hear bad stories, but stories of resiliency and stories of hope,” Vitere said. “That she could come out of a moment like that and not be destroyed by the resentment and the hate, but turn to love. You don’t hear enough of those stories.”

Rockville Centre, like communities across the country, has seen its share of antisemitic incidents in recent years. The Proud Boys, a neo-fascist militant organization deemed an extremist hate group by the Anti-Defamation League, marched through village streets in October 2021 and May 2022.

And at a village board meeting in April 2022, a resident complained about a large menorah on the front lawn of the Chabad of Rockville Centre, and said she was concerned that the Orthodox Jewish community was moving into the neighborhood.

The village has since passed a law codifying the community’s stance against such hatred with its adoption of the International Holocaust Remembrance Alliance’s definition of antisemitism: “a certain perception of Jews, which may be expressed as hatred towards Jews.”

The South Side seniors also asked Simon about her views on Israel, and the protests focusing on its war with Hamas.

“Hamas wants to wipe out Israel,” she said. “Why can’t we finally have a country? We had no place to go in the 1940s and no country would let us in, so (the Nazis) took us and they killed us. But had we had a country like we do now, a lot of Jews would have been saved, because we would have had a place to go.”

Simon said that if what took place in Israel on Oct. 7 were to happen anywhere else in the world, that country would have likely fought back, as Israel has.

“It’s a very complicated topic,” Vitere said. “As educators, it’s very challenging to address these issues. But it’s important, and necessary. And you can’t do it alone — you have to do it in a supported way, and I think bringing Rosalie here is a real expression of our support to do that.”