When a Notre Dame teacher read about a Holocaust survivor’s visit to Unity, she felt compelled to bring Eva Olsson’s story of horror and hope to her own community and her own students.
“That generation is the last generation who will be able to see the human face of the Holocaust, that will be able to make that connection,” says Theresa Eppich, Grade 5 teacher.
“I had had the opportunity in university to hear a holocaust survivor speak. It really changed things for me,” she says. “It was so personal.”
For Eppich, the Holocaust stopped being about a group of people that a terrible thing happened to, and became something that happened to a person she had met.
She knew Olsson could do that for her students.
“I wished my students could hear her story because I feel like in the world today there is still so much hatred of different groups and toward Jewish people and toward anyone who’s different.”
It became important for Eppich to ensure her students would keep the memory of the Holocaust alive.
“I really want, first of all, for my students to know that if ever anyone said, ‘This didn’t happen,’ they can say, ‘It did, because I met someone who went through this.’”
With all the information available to youth today, it’s hard to filter what is truth, what is semi-truth and what is half fiction, she says.
“For my little crew, I just want them to know without a doubt that this terrible thing did happen … and we never want it to happen again.”
An encounter with Ruth Cey, principal of the high school in Unity where Olsson had told her story, solidified things for Eppich. She got the website information from Cey and made contact.
At school one morning, she got a phone call from Olsson, saying her son usually does her bookings but that she had some time, saw Eppich’s email and thought she would call and chat about possibilities.
If Eppich had been impressed by what she had read about Olsson, she was even more so talking to the lady herself.
“Her warmth isn’t limited by the phone,” says Eppich. “Even though I’d never met her in person and I’d never talked to her before, I felt like I knew her for a very long time. It was almost like speaking with a friend in that she was just so kind and caring and easy to talk to. She cared about what I had to say and answered my questions so honestly and open. That was really wonderful.”
Eppich says she then felt compelled to make the visit happen, although she had no idea how to go about it.
“I don’t know,” she thought. “I’m just going to do it somehow.”
She went to her principal, who got in touch with the division level of Light of Christ Catholic Schools where she found support and assistance, especially from communications person Marie Graw.
“It wouldn’t have happened if I had tried to do it on my own at all,” she says. “I needed help.”
There were arrangements to make regarding flights and booking costs, and obviously there was fundraising to do. They were able to partner with a school in Carlyle that also wanted to bring Olsson out from her home in the Muskoka area of Ontario, so that meant they could share transportation costs.
The community’s service organizations and numerous businesses were contacted and Eppich is happy to say they received a positive response.
John Paul II Collegiate offered its gym as a venue, making it possible to make the presentation available to 750 people at a time, so morning and afternoon sessions were planned. According to how many could be accommodated, invitations were also extended to the other school divisions in the community. In addition, St. Vital Church agreed to host an evening presentation.
“Those were key ways the community really pulled in and said, ‘OK, we’re going to support you to make this project happen,’ which I was so thankful for,” says Eppich, who has been teaching in North Battleford for three years. “Really I was determined to make it happen, but I also couldn’t have done it without that support and it was a really beautiful testament to the community that’s here that I’m still learning more about.”
Olsson’s story shows how people have the capacity to forget other people are human, says Eppich.
“And we all have that capacity,” she says. “Those people who were Nazis, they had families, they had lives, and the people in the community, some helped neighbours, some pretended they didn’t know them because they were terrified for their own lives.”
In their shoes, she says she doesn’t know what she would do.
“I don’t know if I would hide people or not. I wish that I could say, ‘Yes, I know I’d do that,’ but when you’re scared you’d do things you aren’t maybe proud of and these people were people just like we’re people. Hopefully,” she adds, “in those situations we would stand strong. But we don’t have to face those situations.”
She says we don’t have to feel guilty that we can’t save the world, but if we each try to follow what is right and stay away from what is wrong, that’s a start.
Olsson’s presentation underscores that message. She never uses the word “hate,” she calls for tolerance and acceptance and for bystanders to act when the see bullying, for the Nazis were, after all, bullies.
Eppich says, “We have our own challenges in the Battlefords. There are a lot of things here that we have to work on, like everywhere else. Every community has those challenges. But I think if young people know that there have been people who’ve lived through the very darkest of times and kept hope, maybe in their lives they will have the courage to keep on going when things are tough.”
She adds, “I don’t know all the answers to the world’s problems but I do know that Eva brings a message of hope and just having her story heard will be such a beautiful gift for this community.”
