Holocaust Survivor Tells 400 Students: Stand Up to Bullies

A woman who survived the Holocaust by hiding in a dirt cellar as a toddler stood before 400 middle schoolers this week with an urgent message about kindness and courage.

Helen Marks visited Perrysburg Junior High School in Ohio on Wednesday to share her story of survival. Born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1941, she was only 18 months old when Nazi soldiers pulled her family from their home in the middle of the night.

Her mother made an impossible choice to save them both. During an interview with a Nazi official, she pretended to be loyal to the regime, then arranged for a Catholic family in a Belgian village to hide her daughter before returning to Antwerp.

The family told neighbors Helen was their relative. When danger came too close, they hid her in a cellar, a dirt hole in the ground covered by a heavy lid.

Helen described one terrifying moment when German tanks pulled up outside. A soldier's footsteps approached the cellar, pounding on the lid, trying to get it open. Everyone hiding below stopped breathing, afraid even their breath would be too loud.

His commanding officer called him away just in time. Helen reunited with her parents after the war ended. Her father had survived Auschwitz, dropping from 174 pounds to just 95 pounds.

The family moved to the United States in 1947. Helen became a social studies teacher and business owner in Cleveland before dedicating her later years to sharing her story with students.

Why This Inspires

Helen initially resisted speaking publicly about her experience. When her oldest granddaughter asked her to speak at school, her first thought was no.

Then she realized why she survived. "Maybe this is why I survived," she told the Perrysburg students. "And this is why I talk."

Her message focuses on the Jewish concept of tikkun olam, repairing the world. She tells students it sounds like a big order for one person, but not if everyone does small acts of kindness to make life easier for someone else.

When students asked about her hardest experience, she didn't hesitate. "It was the cellar," she said, describing the darkness and fear. But her takeaway wasn't about dwelling on trauma.

"Learn who you are and value yourselves," she told them. "There's a lot of bullying that goes on in schools. If you see it, do something."

One voice can change how hundreds of young people see the world, and Helen Marks is using hers to plant seeds of courage and compassion in the next generation.