On Monday, Dec. 11, 2023, Holocaust survivor Kati Preston spoke at Wayland Middle School (WMS) to discuss her experience and shine light on antisemitism. She was five years old during the Holocaust, and was one of many children in hiding until the Nazis lost their power. Preston wrote a graphic novel called “Hidden: A True Story of the Holocaust” to share her childhood memories.

The WMS auditorium was almost entirely filled to hear her speak, and the audience included Superintendent David Fleishman, Assistant Superintendent Betsy Gavron and Wayland High School principal Allyson Mizoguchi. Police officers were also present for safety reasons.

Rabbi Lisa Eiduson of Temple Shir Tikva and an Eliza J. Norton Foundation representative introduced Preston to the audience. The foundation planned the talk in consideration of the recent antisemitic events in the Wayland community, and invited the local temple to introduce the guest speaker.

Preston shared that she was born into a multireligious family with a Christian mother and a Jewish father. After her parents got married, they were disowned by their respective families. However, her father’s family eventually allowed them to rejoin the family, and as a result, she became closer to her Jewish heritage. Her mother was a dressmaker and well-liked in town, and her father sold fish. She grew up in Transylvania, Romania, and lived blissfully unaware of antisemitism for the first few years of her life.

“I adored my father because he was very cheerful and happy,” Preston said. “He would burst into the room singing opera. He was my hero and he was always nice to me, and back in my time, parents weren’t usually very nice to their children. He would return from work each day with something for me, whether it was a flower, sticker [or] whatever he could find that I would like.”

However, when she was around the age of five, she became aware of the persecution surrounding Jews. Preston described how Jews were slowly excluded from society — starting with colleges, high schools and then many places of work. Preston shared that she was banned from sitting on her favorite park bench when she was young because her father was Jewish. Then, after seeing firsthand antisemitism, her mother sewed a yellow star on her jacket to symbolize her Judaism.

Later in her speech, she told the audience that her father was taken to a ghetto, and she never saw him again. The “ghettos” were created by German occupation authorities to confine Jews in a small space before eventually sending them to concentration camps. Ghettos isolated Jewish people from non-Jews, and made it easier for Hitler and the Nazis to annihilate a large population of people. Preston explained that her mother gave her to a non-Jewish woman named Elizabeth, who hid her in a barn in the countryside in order to protect her.

In her speech, Preston recalled the long, scary nights she spent in piles of hay with “spiders the size of basketballs.” On one occasion, Nazi soldiers investigated the barn while she hid under a haystack, and they whipped Elizabeth to get her to disclose Preston’s whereabouts. Preston was inches away from being found. In that moment, she truly understood how close she was to death.

Now, Preston aims to speak for all those who can’t. She was a “hidden child,” which meant she was hidden until the Nazi’s and Hitler were no longer in power. According to Preston, she was lucky to survive, and believes that it is now her job to inform others of the horrors of hate to keep the younger generations informed. She mentioned multiple times that if stories aren’t passed on from generation to generation, the horrors of history will repeat themselves.

“I don’t care if you’re straight, gay, blue, green, Muslim, Jewish or anything else,” Preston said. “It could happen to anybody, a genocide or [a smaller form of attack]. You need to stand up [against prejudice] and be aware of prejudice in all its forms.”

Preston chooses to think of herself as a survivor, not a victim, since she survived and Hitler didn’t. She also emphasized the importance of always choosing love. She feels that people aren’t born hating, instead, they learn to hate. She believes that only way to defend against hate is with strong, everlasting love for others.

“Please read every banned book, because if it is banned, it’s worth reading,” Preston said. “Don’t let them take books, don’t let them strip you of who you are and don’t let them make you hate each other. Stand against all bullying, and always remember that it doesn’t start with concentration and genocide, it starts with small things like my favorite park bench [being taken away].”

The goal of Preston’s speech at WMS was to remind people of how to treat others and to keep bringing good into the world. She urged the audience to do something good for humanity every day.

“If you let them make you sad and you hate them, you will be a very unhappy person,” Preston said. “You have to love them, that’s what bullies hate. Envelop yourself in love, because when you receive love back, it’s like getting a big hug.”