PANELISTS RELIVE ANGUISH DURING THE HOLOCAUST

A secret meeting in the woods with family friends begging to be sheltered from the Nazis.

A mother spoon feeding her newborn baby opium so it would die quickly and not cry, which might lead to their discovery.

Living in a ghetto and watching as other Jews died from starvation or disease.

These are images of the Holocaust that Jerry Koenig still carries with him.

Although he doesn't talk about that period of his life often, Koenig joined a panel discussion Wednesday afternoon at Southeast Missouri State University to help students remember the tragedy. About 50 people attended the discussion in the University Center Ballroom.

Other panelists were Rudolf Oppenheim, a German Jew and Holocaust survivor, and Dr. Judith Doneson, an expert on films of the Holocaust who also teaches a course at Washington University in St. Louis.

"Sometimes you wonder if this is really a true story that you're telling," Koenig said. "But then it brings you back to reality when you see a list of names."

Koenig's younger brother visited Israel and brought back copies of the Register of Jewish Survivors in Poland. It lists 58,000 names, including those of Koenig and his immediate family, of people who survived the concentration camps of the German Nazis.

Koenig's family survived by hiding for 18 months in a bunker built into the barn of a small farm. In exchange for his family's survival, Koenig's father agreed to give a 60-acre family farm to the family who sheltered them.

The stories told Wednesday were ones of survival. However, as many as 6 million to 11 million Jews died in concentration camps or death camps like those at Auschwitz or Treblinka during World War II.

The Holocaust occurred because the German government believed the Jewish people weren't fit to live, said Dr. Mitchell Gerber, associate professor of political science at Southeast and a Holocaust scholar. "These were people who were targeted because of their race, not for their property or to deny their religion."

The key to remembering the Holocaust can't be found in comparison to modern-day tragedies, Doneson said.

Gerber agreed. You can't remember the Holocaust as a set of statistics but as individuals, he said.

The lessons of the Holocaust aren't ones only of history but of involvement, Oppenheim said. He spent much of the war in Shanghai living in a ghetto of sorts. His family escaped to China before the war began and lived in a rundown area of the city where sometimes 26 people lived in a single room. For many of the German Jews, this was a shock, he said.

"Shanghai was a way to save our lives," he said. "It was sort of like growing a flower garden within the desert."

Once the German Jews adjusted to life in their settlement, they opened shops, restaurants and created theater groups and acting troupes. There even was a symphony orchestra, Oppenheim said.

While they lived in the Jewish settlement in China, few people realized what was happening back in their native lands. "There was no way to know there was that tragedy," he said.

Maybe if more Jews had left Germany, Austria or Poland they would have survived. Maybe if the world would have gotten involved at an earlier stage there wouldn't have been a Holocaust at all, Oppenheim said.

Gerber asked why such atrocities and genocide could occur in a society so rich with culture that it produced Bach and Beethoven. Why was Oskar Schindler so courageous that he saved lives, while others failed to show their courage? Gerber asked.

"I urge you to always remember," he said.

Films like "Schindler's List," which tells the story of one man's plan to help save the Jews, help people remember the Holocaust, Doneson said. But there soon could be a gap in that history as Holocaust survivors die.

"We need to tell historical accuracy and not comparative tragedy," she said.