Margo Uhrman’s grandparents, Morris and Jeanette Bir, were guests at Ken Clark’s senior elective class, 20^th Century Genocide and Holocaust.  Mr. Bir shared his experience of WWII, beginning with the invasion of Poland in 1939.  He recalls the first day of school as a 10-year-old boy in the small Polish town of Sarnaki, when the principal announced the start of the war and ordered them to go home until further notice.  The notice to return to school never came.

     He shared with students how the rights of the Jews in Poland were gradually taken away.  First they were prohibited from attending Polish schools, then they were taken from their homes and moved to the “ghetto,” then came food rationing.  And finally, the ultimate unthinkable: the mass movement of Jews to concentration camps.

     In spite of Hitler’s plan, the Germans did not have enough time to eliminate all of the nearly 5 million Jews in Poland.  Mr. Bir’s father, a respected and visionary businessman, found a family who agreed to house and hide them from the Germans – until that family began to fear for their own safety. The Birs and their three sons were then forced to flee again, this time to the forest, where life became a test of mere survival through harsh winters with insufficient food and clothing. 

     In the spring of 1944, the Russians brought relief, but there was no home left for the Bir family to return to.  After being transported to Germany at the end of the war, where they were housed at first in a Munich museum and then in a former SS settlement just outside of Munich, they came to America to build a new life.

    “When you see the Statue of Liberty,” Mr. Bir explained, “tears come down your face.  So many people take freedom for granted, and also the people who fought and died for our freedom.”  He expressed his sense of gratitude through service in the U.S. Army for two years after his arrival.  “I wanted to do my duty. When you have experienced basic freedoms taken from you, you understand why we fought all those years.” 

     The Birs are part of a series of speakers invited to share their experiences with the students in Mr. Clark’s elective class.  Others include children of survivors of the Armenian Genocide, Sam and Sue Mirakian; a survivor of Auschwitz, Gita Frankel; survivors of the Killing Fields of Cambodia; and a Tutsi survivor of the Rwandan Genocide, among others.