Holocaust survivor Rachel Miller urged Washington University students to keep stories of the Holocaust alive at a Hillel event commemorating Kristallnacht Nov. 9.

Miller’s testimony was amplified by preserved photographs and documentation of the atrocities inflicted upon her and her family.

“I am one of the only child survivors that still has pictures of their family,” Miller said. “And I have to tell you, it’s the greatest gift—you can never, ever replace the pictures.”

Miller devoted a portion of her presentation to commemorate the deceased members of both her immediate and extended family. She recalled her uncle’s death as he was among the first of her family to be killed.

“At ten o’clock in the morning, he had been injected with something,” Miller said. “He became very ill and died in [his wife’s] arms Tuesday, Dec. 30, 1941.”

Miller’s uncle was only one of many of her relatives to suffer at the hands of the Nazi regime. Miller remembered her family’s capture in Paris and subsequent transportation to a holding camp.

“They were taken to a holding camp by cattle car,” Miller said. “When they arrived there, they shaved their heads and were given a blanket. A German soldier fell in love with my sister, Sabine. He wanted to marry her but she was bound for Auschwitz. That was the last time I heard from my family.”

Prior to her mother and sister’s execution in a gas chamber, Miller experienced the horrors of the transportation system devised by the Nazis for removal and extermination of the Jews.

“We had rats running around us for five and a half days,” Miller said. “To this day, I go ballistic when I see a mouse. I was afraid of the dark until I was fifty. I was afraid of my own shadow.”

While Miller was able to take refuge in the countryside with a farmer, she saw her people afflicted by what she characterized as unthinkable acts of torture and saw their right to exist as humans completely stripped from them.

“At the end of the day, you had to use the chamber pot,” Miller said. “The guard didn’t like the way this man emptied the pot so he made him take off his clothes and stand by the fence for eight hours. Mind you, this was in the bitter winter.”

Those who were deemed unfit to work went straight to the so-called “showers,” which were later revealed to be gas chambers. Those fit to work—oftentimes young adult men and adolescents—performed physical labor on 180 calories per day.

“I saw a mother jump out of a building with her daughter,” Miller said. “Dare I say she was very smart to do that. She must’ve loved her daughter very much to save her from suffering.”

Miller briefly recounted other acts of resistance she witnessed, like a French Jewish woman who equipped seventy incarcerated Jews with rifles despite the severe penalty she could have very well received.

“They say that the Jews went down without fighting. That’s totally bogus,” Miller said. “If you take away ‘—ance’ away from ‘resistance,’ you get ‘resist.’ Résistance in French means ‘underground fighters.’”

According to freshman Kayla Silvermintz, Miller’s talk was an important reminder that everyone should remember the Holocaust regardless of their family’s history.

“Though the Holocaust has been a personal historical experience for my family, the Jewish people and other groups as well, it is a genocide widely misunderstood and one that must be remembered,” Silvermintz said.

“It’s interesting that she brought up groups of people that weren’t Jewish and it’s definitely important to bring awareness to that,” freshman Lauren Grabell said.

To close the evening, Miller implored the Jewish youth in the audience to sustain and hold in memory the Holocaust and the multiform stories it engendered.

“There’s not a lot of us left to share our stories—not only to share our stories but to preserve the Holocaust,” Miller said. “I pray that God gives me the strength to continue sharing my story even in my old age.”