Mark it With a Stone

How did you cope with finding out that your father was a Holocaust survivor?

How did you tell your own children?

Two questions Year 9 pupils asked Sandy Rubenstein, on her visit to JAGS. ‘I am a child of survivors‘ she told us.  Both her parents survived the Holocaust and the memoirs of her father, Joseph Horn, are written for all to see in his book: ‘Mark it With a Stone’, his account of his struggle as a young boy to survive the Nazi death camps. ‘My evacuation from Auschwitz was the culmination of all my experiences’, he says in his interview with Steven Spielberg. ‘My great dream, and my desire, was to survive to be a witness.’

As the survivors themselves diminish in numbers, it becomes even more critical that their children keep the history alive. Sandy Rubenstein’s moving and very direct account for the Year 9 group provoked some thoughtful responses. Girls wanted to know whether Sandy’s father sought vengeance, whether he returned to Germany, what for him was a normal day in the camp, how he bartered for food and whether there was help for those traumatised by the experience.  For Year 9 and their teachers, it was an ordinary afternoon, with an extra-ordinary lesson: how powerful oral history teaches us about the past, makes us confront the future and how we live our lives today.
You can visit the website: www.markitwithastone.com to find out more.