During the past 20 years, math instructor Goldie Minkowitz has welcomed student audiences to the bi-annual Holocaust Programs she facilitates at Teaneck High School marking Kristallnacht in the fall and Yom HaShoah in the spring. She sets the mood by reminding students that they are the last living witnesses to the Holocaust through their hearing testimony directly from survivors. In the words of Elie Wiesel, “To hear a witness is to be a witness!” As the population of Holocaust survivors is quickly diminishing, statistics showing that only half of the survivors will be alive within the next six years, the opportunity to hear testimony from an eyewitness survivor is becoming rarer and more precious.

On Wednesday morning, April 23, Minkowitz introduced Assistant Principal Margot Mack who greeted over 300 Teaneck High School students gathered in the school’s auditorium to hear from survivor Chaya Maria Farkas. Mack reminded the students about how difficult it must be for a survivor to share her story and how respectful and appreciative they should be.

A resident of Bergenfield, Farkas has addressed many student audiences over the years about her experiences and was pleased to address a local audience of young people. Jason Smith who serves as the Survivor Engagement Coordinator and Coordinator of the Speakers’ Bureau for the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, widely known as The Claims Conference, helped bring Farkas to the school. Smith introduced the program by sharing some of what the Claims Conference does and why it matters.

“The Claims Conference was established in 1951 with one mission: to secure a small measure of justice for Jewish victims of Nazi persecution. In the decades since, we have negotiated with the German government for compensation and restitution and we continue that work until today…To date we have secured more than $90 billion in compensation for Holocaust survivors around the world which helps with vital services including home care, food, medical support and emergency assistance, ensuring that survivors can live out their lives in dignity. … Right now, we assist 130,000 living survivors in more than 80 countries- the largest being the U.S., Israel and across Europe and the Former Soviet Union. In the U.S. at present there are approximately 50,000 survivors, in their 80s, 90s and some even older. … Our work is equally about remembrance and education.That is why today’s event is so vital. It is my privilege to present Chaya Maria Farkas who will share her personal testimony, a living history lesson that no textbook can replace.”

Farkas was born in 1939 in Hungary. Her parents gave her the official name of Maria so that she would not be readily identified as Jewish as the level of antisemitism at the time had risen to serious proportions. Her father was a talented athlete but could not compete in the 1936 Olympic Games as he was Jewish. In 1942, her father was sent with other Jewish men to work in a forced labor battalion leaving her and her mother, brother and grandmother to fend for themselves.

In 1944, when Jews were already forced to wear the identifying yellow stars sewn to their outer garments, the Nazis marched into Hungary and rounded up her neighbors into a local synagogue. They returned to their homes after three days only to be visited by the Nazi gendarmes who came to collect the children. Farkas’ mother attempted to delay their arrest by claiming that she was handicapped and needed their assistance. But after a few successful attempts at saving them, she realized that she would have to think of an alternate plan. At the time, Raoul Wallenberg, the Swedish Diplomat, had come to Budapest and set up safe houses for Jews facing deportation. Farkas’ mother sent the children to the houses where they were safe while she and the grandmother were sent to the ghetto. When the Nazis raided the safe houses and the children were sent out to the street, Farkas’ mother came looking for them. She found them and realized that her son was burning up with fever. She begged the Nazi guard to let her take them to the ghetto to feed them and would not relent until he agreed. She was able to save her children from the deportations from the ghetto which took 400,000 of Hungary’s 600,000 Jews to the killing camps as late as 1944.

In January 1945, the bombing stopped. Miraculously Farkas’ father walked into the ghetto. He had saved himself by allying with Russian soldiers and leading them to entry points in Budapest. The family returned to their apartment and remained in Budapest, now under Communist rule, until 1956. Farkas attended Jewish high school as the Hungarian schools were closed to Jewish students. At the onset of the Hungarian revolution in 1956, the family emigrated to Israel where Farkas met her husband, a Romanian Jew who lost 11 of 13 siblings and was forced to serve in the gas chambers in the concentration camp. They relocated to the U.S. in 1966 where Farkas worked as a nutritionist and raised three sons, all physicians, and a daughter.

Farkas sees her blessed life in the U.S. as a gift from God and hopes to repay it by speaking out against senseless hatred whenever she is given the opportunity. She has taken her grandchildren back to Budapest to retrace her past and show them the lineup of shoes along the shores of the Danube River where the residents of Budapest were brought to be shot and thrown into the river. It was only through her mother’s fortitude that she and her brother were spared this fate.

The student audience was most attentive and asked sensitive questions of the speaker. It was obvious that they had accepted their task as witnesses with great seriousness.

After the presentation Minkowitz led the guests to the Teaneck High School Holocaust Center. There, Farkas was photographed against the wall displaying many of the previous Holocaust survivors who had addressed the students over the years. Smith commented that he had never seen such a tasteful and comprehensive exhibit in a school building. He was particularly moved by the huge wall mural created by a student for the opening of the center and by the accounts of the faculty members who wrote about their own relatives who had lived through the Holocaust.