A Holocaust survivor tells her story | DW Documentary

[Music] margaret meisner is 96 years old she survived the holocaust and she does whatever she can to ensure it will never be forgotten i think one has to learn to forgive but not to forget she also passes on her own experiences and memories she says it's the only way to keep something like this from happening again in the future margaret meisner spends much of her time at the holocaust memorial museum in washington dc [Music] she and about 80 other survivors of the holocaust work here on a volunteer basis she guides visitors through the museum tells the story of her life and helps other survivors search for information about family members in the museum's archive [Music] this is my favorite exhibit of this museum and it came to be really quite accidentally because this is the tower of faces are 3 000 people in a small town on the border between between poland and lithuania where the germans came one night and short took the men the jewish men out and shot them and the next day they came and took the women and the children and put them in synagogues and torched them and this entire community was killed only because of their religion this girl survived the night the rest of the village was wiped out she became a historian and now works in the united states for eleven years she collected photographs from her village a shishkiss she hopes to preserve the memory of all 3 500 inhabitants through this exhibition because she said that the visitors to the museum they only see that the jews they don't know what the jews looked like who were murdered and here you see the faces of the people who were murdered and she really did i think a fantastic favor to all of us and these young people here who are looking at these faces that you could have some of these pictures in your grandparents photo album they would not be so different from anything so many young people in school classes come to see the museum to meet a holocaust survivor and listen to her story is often the most interesting part of their visit this is my favorite museum ever so well you have lots of you will have lots of time to see all kinds of other museums when you go traveling so i'm glad that you came nice talking to you ma'am yeah nice talking to you margaret meisner was born in innsbruck austria and raised in prague in 1934 the growing anti-semitism in her city became more and more noticeable so margaret's mother sent her to paris and joined her a year later but the influence of the nazis was soon felt in france as well one day her mother received a letter so my mother was told one day she would be deported and i took her to the po and she sort of got notification three days from now you present yourself at the police station and take with you what you can carry on your back and three days worth of food and two blankets but did you know where she was no so i went to the police station with her and asked them where are you taking her says none of your business go home and why are you taking her none of your business go home so here i was by myself my mother was gone and we had no money market's mother was deported to gers internment camp in southern france margaret was 18 years old alone and had to find a way out of europe she fled paris on a bicycle at the same time her mother succeeded in escaping the internment camp by some miracle the mother and daughter found each other just 12 kilometers from gerst she came from far away and she waved at me and i didn't wave back because i didn't know who could wave and she came closer and she waved more and i still didn't wave and when she came closer i finally recognized her that was my mom because she was very thin and very dark because she spent most of her time outdoors and i didn't come to to embrace her and that's something that she never forgot she said i finally found my child and she didn't even come forward to embrace me why didn't you because i didn't recognize her i was just shocked that she came together they made their way to spain where they found a way to travel to america but it was not to be they were picked up by the spanish police and thrown in jail so after all this we were going to be handed to the germans in spain but you see i'm here so we had good luck good friends who helped helped help and exactly three years after i left my home in prague we came to the united states by that time i was 19. these figures are some of the memorabilia from the new beginning margaret had to make in the united states she married frank meisner an employee of the united nations and traveled the world with him and this what you see here is the result of 54 years of traveling memories memories and learning i mean you really learn every time you go someplace margaret meisner regularly tells visitors to the holocaust museum about her memories and experiences this is one of the most visited museums in the us capital many people come especially to hear the stories the survivors have to tell margaret meisner is determined to collect as many of them as possible they are eyewitness testimony to a crime against all humankind but her generation is quickly vanishing the holocaust is the only one where death was you that where the germans used um industrial methods of killing people this kind of industrialization of death has never happened anyplace else so that is one of the reasons why one should not forget it and more than anything else one should try and keep these errors from being repeated to margaret meisner these issues have gained a new sense of urgency in today's highly volatile political climate there's a great deal of of nationalism all of a sudden and i feel very insecure in in the present political situation certainly some of the some of the moves of the american government right now is very similar to what happened in germany in the 1920s and the 1930s so it's an uncomfortable situation to be in and i am trying not to be a bystander because what happened in germany was the germans knew what was happening and they didn't do anything about it they just stood there after all hitler came to power in 1933 and the killing didn't start until 1941 so there were eight years where the world could have done something about it and nobody did anything margaret is determined to remain active as long as she can she's put her story into a book so people the world over and future generations can read it she's also taking part in a project by german photographer luigi toscano may i touch your face of course just stay like that please toscano has photographed around 200 holocaust survivors all over the world the exhibition is shown in public venues and will be coming to washington dc soon that's it thank thank you okay there's just no glossing over the growing anti-semitism and we've got something to counter it with [Music] those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it now it's not my intention to shake my fist and point at this genocide but to show that there are still people here who have lots to tell us it's as simple as that today margaret meisner's family live in australia canada and spain her relatives in prague were also forced to flee margaret uses her smartphone to stay in touch with her grandchildren and great-grandchildren and she goes for a workout four times a [Music] week after her husband passed away she remarried at age 94. her new love entered her life quite unexpectedly today she lives with her husband john garms in washington at every opportunity marget has a message for future generations there's you can't hate anybody and you can't want revenge because so i mean you know i think people people commit a crime and kill somebody and then they go to jail for life that person who was killed is the gone doesn't come back the fact that this guy sits in jail doesn't help you any so i think i mean i think that one has to learn to forgive even that's sometimes not easy but it makes you a better person i believe and i think that's important so weird

Channel: DW Documentary

Views: 531,924

Rating: 4.6170554 out of 5

Keywords: Margit Meissner, Holocaust Museum, Washington persecution of the Jews, National Socialists, history, Holocaust memorial, Holocaust remembrance, DW, Deutsche Welle, documentary, DW Documentary

Id: ciBQFItYc7E

Length: 12min 0sec (720 seconds)

Published: Mon Jan 29 2018