Holocaust survivor shares experiences
Local Holocaust survivor Aline Kultgen shared her story Thursday night about growing up in France during the Holocaust.
Her speech was the final event of Holocaust Remembrance Week, which the Jewish Student Organization organized to remember the people murdered in the Holocaust, including six million Jews.
Nazis murdered Kultgen’s father, who was part of a resistance group, when she was 6 years old, Kultgen said. As World War II was coming to an end, her father, who lived in Lyon, France, stopped by for a visit.
“My father was very concerned and seemed to have a premonition about what awaited him back in Lyon,” Kultgen said. “My aunt made entreaties to him not to go back, but he did. As it turns out, he had already been denounced.”
In August 1944, the Nazis arrested and interrogated her father’s resistance group, brought them to an abandoned caretaker’s house and machined-gunned them individually, Kultgen said. Then the Nazis poured gasoline over the victims’ bodies and dynamited the house where their bodies lay inside, Kultgen said. She said the Allied troops were only 50 kilometers away.
Kultgen said the crimes against humanity committed during the Holocaust are not unique to that era. She said people must learn not only to tolerate differences, but also to respect them.
“We need to face the echoes of Auschwitz, echoes of hatred and genocide, that are still resonating around the world,” Kultgen said.
As an adult, Kultgen revisited France with her children and found a memorial dedicated to victims of the massacre responsible for her father's death, including her father’s grave.
As she started researching the Holocaust, Kultgen attended a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar in Lyon to study the Holocaust with other educators, she said. There, she went to historically significant sites and interviewed concentration camp survivors, people from resistance groups and people who hid during the war.
“I made a decision after that experience that it would be my mission to tell the story of what took place and therefore to make my small contribution to remembering the past,” Kultgen said.
Kultgen taught French at Jefferson Junior High School and the Holocaust in France and French Conversation at Osher Lifelong Learning Institute.