Holocaust Survivor Shares Message of Peace and Love

By Joe Shuron

Marion Blumenthal Lazan is constantly visiting schools and other locations in the U.S. and elsewhere to share her story of surviving the Holocaust because she wants to “prevent our past from becoming your future.”

Blumenthal Lazan joined CHC via Zoom on April 10 and described her experience in the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where her family was imprisoned from February 1944 to April 1945.

“We as children saw things no one should have ever seen,” Blumenthal Lazan said.

One example she gave was corpses being transported by guards in a wheelbarrow.

The inhumane treatment she and the others at the camp were subjected to include-poor living conditions in a cramped area with bare minimum amounts of food, a long wooden plank with cut out holes where they were forced to go to the bathroom, and a daily count of the “prisoners” that took place outside no matter the weather.

Despite all of the mistreatment, Blumenthal Lazan found hope in an imaginary game she made up. The game involved finding four pebbles everyday, that represented her mother, father, brother, and herself. She believed if she found four pebbles a day it would mean her and her family would survive.

In 1996, Blumenthal Lazan published a memoir of her experience titled, “Four Perfect Pebbles.” There is also a song of the same name based on her life.

A week before Bergen-Belsen was liberated by British troops on April 15, 1945, Blumenthal Lazan and her family were sent to Auschwitz in train cars with no food or water. En route, the Russian army saved the prisoners from the train.

All four members of her family survived the death camps. However, her father Walter died a few weeks later.

The remaining members of the family immigrated to the United States when Blumenthal Lazan was 13. Having never formally attended school, she was placed in the fourth grade but worked tirelessly catch up. Blumenthal Lazan took extra classes and successfully graduated high school “on time” at 18.

Blumenthal Lazan encourages everyone to “be Kind. Notice our similarities and always be true to yourself instead of blindly following belief.”

This August Blumenthal and her husband Nathaniel will celebrate their 70th weeding anniversary. Together they have three children who have given them nine grandchildren, and 12 great-grandchildren.