Dodd Students Hear Holocaust Survivor
Tell of "Life at the End of the Tunnel"

Students in four English classes at the Dodd Middle School sat rapt in attention May 17 as they heard 86-year-old Irene Weiss of Bayside, Queens, describe her experiences as a young woman who spent almost two harrowing years in concentration camps during World War II before being liberated by British troops in April 1945.

Weiss spoke to teacher Lori Cohen’s English classes as part of readings they had done that dealt with the Holocaust, including Nobel Prize winner Elie Wiesel’s moving account in the book, Night, which described experiences similar to those recalled by Weiss.

"When we arrived at Auschwitz," she said in a clear and steady voice that concealed the emotion visibly welling up in her, "Dr. [Josef] Mengele pointed to the left for my mother and to the right for me. This was the last time I saw my mother." Elderly women and the infirm were sent to the left, which meant the gas chambers and the crematoria. Her father and brother had earlier been separated from her, and she never saw either of them again.

(Mengele, who performed sadistic experiments on children and women, was convicted, in absentia, of war crimes and was sentenced to death, but cheated international law by drowning while swimming in South America, where he had hidden from authorities for more than 30 years.)

Weiss lost both parents, siblings, cousins, and other relatives to the death camps and emphasized to the students that before the war, "I had a happy life—playing with the other kids, just like any of you do."

Cohen said that her students were moved by the first-person experience. Weiss said, "One of the students told me that all of the books he read and movies he saw did not bring the horror of the experience home to him. My talk made the biggest impression."