By: Conner Williams Editor-in-Chief
Powerful feelings accompanied all those that traveled through campus May 4-5. At a glance or from a distance, the scene appeared to be a beautiful display of blooming flowers under the springtime sun, with all colors of the rainbow glimmering in the expanse of the fresh, green landscape encompassing Western’s serene setting.
But upon further inspection, the scene changed drastically.
What first seemed to be a colorful spectacle of a springtime botanical pleasantry was, in fact, a brutal reminder of one of the greatest tragedies in human history: the Holocaust.
27,660 miniature flags poked out of the grass along the walkways carving their way through the heart of campus as part of Western’s role in Holocaust Remembrance Day.
Each flag represented about 500 people killed during the Holocaust.
True figures are impossible to measure, and all that we have are approximations; an estimated 13.8 million people.
The flags were separated out by color to represent a different denomination of people:
Yellow for Jewish adults – 8,534 flags representing 4,267,000 deaths
Small yellow for Jewish children – 3,500 flags representing 1,750,000 deaths
Brown for Roma and Sinti (Gypsies) – 1,000 flags representing 500,000 deaths
Pink for homosexuals – 30 flags representing 15,000 deaths
White for Jehovah’s Witnesses – 6 flags representing 3,000 deaths
Orange for mentally/physically disabled – 500 flags representing 250,000 deaths
Red for Soviet prisoners of war – 6,600 flags representing 3,300,000
Blue for Polish Catholics – 6,000 flags representing 3,000,000 deaths
Lime for Spanish republicans – 40 flags representing 20,000 deaths
Green for Serbians – 1,400 flags representing 700,000 deaths
Jennifer Murphy-Schwanke, a senior sociology major, has experienced tragic loss herself. She lost two of her three kids.
“To think that each flag doesn’t even represent one [person], it represents that many more … I’m a parent and it just hits me that there’s that many people that have lost family and it hasn’t even been 100 years yet,” said Murphy-Schwanke.
“There are parallels today, and if I could tell anyone one thing – not that I’ve been touched by it myself but to just think of the families that have been – take five minutes and attempt to put yourself in their shoes,” Murphy-Schwanke said. “Don’t forget, don’t ever forget.”
As part of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Deb Mrowka, whose family largely survived the events of the Holocaust, spoke on May 5 about her family’s incredible journey through the internment camps, particularly her mother’s amazing unbreakable willpower in the face of immeasurable odds.
Mrowka used to bring her mother, Eline Hoekstra Dresden, with her when they traveled to different speaking events in order to offer commentary and answer questions, but Dresden is now unable to do so since she has reached 93 years of age.
Mrowka spoke of the history of World War II and the conception of the Nazi Party’s rise to power as Germany attempted to rebuild after economically shattering war reparations pulsed through the country after World War I.
Perhaps one of the most compelling moments of Mrowka’s presentation was when she commented on the carefully orchestrated psychological manipulation the Nazis executed on their victims. She spoke of how they were “so smart” in the way they allowed for slight glimmers of hope to be allowed in the Nazi Party’s captives for the sole purpose of ripping it away later on. In one instance, Mrowka spoke of people who were forced out of their homes but were allowed to bring a suitcase full of whatever they could fit in it, which allowed for a small sense of hope that the victims might be able to trade something they owned for their life.
“The difference between being a victim and a survivor is your attitude,” Mrowka said. “If you keep the attitude of being a victim, you’ve let the perpetrator win.”
Mrowka’s family hailed from Utrecht, in the Netherlands, and upon realizing that some parts of western Europe were no longer safe for Jews when the war began in 1939, they took in two Jewish refugee children whose parents had sent them way from Germany.
After the Netherlands was invaded, German authorities found the two orphans and forced their relocation back to the orphanage, where they were ultimately deported to the Auschwitz concentration camps and murdered.
Dresden graduated from high school in 1940 and was forced out of college in 1941 when the Nazis expelled Jews from all schools, afterwards seizing Dresden’s family home in the Netherlands.
Dresden became pregnant in 1941 and had to walk to the hospital to give birth since Jews were not allowed to use any other forms of transportation. She bore a son, Daantje, who she gave up when he was three months old to a non-Jewish family that volunteered to hide him for safekeeping.
Somehow, the family was kept in contact with and Dresden was reunited with Daantje when he was three years old after she was liberated from an internment camp in the Netherlands called Westerbork on April 12, 1945.
In 1958, Dresden, her husband, and their five children, including Mrowka, emigrated from the Netherlands to a rural area near Portland, Oregon.
Brianna Martinez, a sophomore exercise science major, touched on her feelings of the presentation and about Western’s contribution to Holocaust Remembrance Day.
“I’ve always been interested in the Holocaust, and to hear someone’s story is so much different than reading about it in a textbook in a history class,” Martinez said after Mrowka’s presentation.
“[The flag display] definitely makes me sad, to think that each one represents 500 people, it’s crazy to think about,” said Martinez.
Amanda Owren, a sophomore psychology major, noted Mrowka’s overall lighthearted tone when discussing the events that her family endured.
“It says a lot about the person that they’re able to go through that and still have a positive attitude and look back on it without just negative thoughts,” said Owren. “I know if I went through that, I couldn’t do it.”
“She’s definitely like her mom, she’s so strong,” Martinez added.
Towards the end of her presentation, Mrowka alluded to similarities between the rhetoric of her family’s past and that of the current political climate in the United States.
“It scares me the way that some people are voting … Just like in Germany in those days, people had to blame somebody,” said Mrowka. “And so, if you follow that rhetoric and you blame other people in regards to immigration and these other things, that’s just not American.”
“We are an awesome country and we should celebrate the differences in people instead of negating them,” stated Mrowka.
Contact the author at journaleditor@wou.edu or on Twitter @journalEIC
