Daniel's Story by Kate

When I went through the doors of the children’s center in the Holocaust Museum, I thought to myself prepare to be bored Kate. Well I was so totally wrong. At the time I hadn’t realized how sad and hard the years were back then and I thought it was weird not to notice that after I had read a whole book about it twice called Escape from Warsaw (it’s a really good book I recommend it to all 5^th graders!). I’m going to go back to the story, I walked through the doors and a movie popped up on a giant screen above my head it talked about Daniel’s life before the concentration camp and the Ghetto the last words were Remember my story and I did remember it well do or did, or… whatever.  I turned the corner and I saw a kitchen (obviously it was fake) with sounds of laughing children and a note with a box next to it that had artificial cookies in it with Daniel’s sister’s name on some of them. Then after that there was a window that you could open and close with before and after effects and another one next to it. When you past that it all got more intense, there was a note at every station and turns out all the notes were from his diary. It told all about getting kicked out of school having to sacrifice his favorite sport… swimming he got kicked out of there too, having to sew a yellow star on all of his jackets and writing JEW in dark black letters on the star, going to the concentration camp and the Ghetto, his mother and sister taken away and murdered getting his diary taken away (ha, funny thing he still wrote in it when it was taken away.) getting hardly any food. Well on the bright side he survived and that’s something to feel good about. Other than that it was -like I said before- sad and probably the hardest thing in life. I watched one more short movie at the end about the concentration camp and the Ghetto. You got to write a small note on these small cards (there was a little slot where you put the notes) and I ended up writing about 7 of them. I think Daniel’s story was about the only thing that didn’t creep me out at the Holocaust Museum.

All photos taken by Kate:

Daniel's sister, Erika

Erika's ID card she had to carry with her everywhere with Jewish symbol

Daniel's bed in his home in Germany

His families kitchen

Their things they took with them 

These kinds of signs were posted everywhere in the Ghetto

Writing thoughts about Daniel's story

Olivia wrote:  "You will never forgit (forget) how brave you were back then beceas (because) it is owase (always) be in your head.  Love Olivia"  What she means to say is, we will never forget what happened during the Holocaust because it will always be in our memory.

Maggie watching and learning about the Holocaust