“I am an eyewitness to some of the most horrible murders and injustices of all time,” said Holocaust survivor Rena Finder. During Winter Week this year, Finder came to Wayland High School to speak about her experiences in the Holocaust and her hopes for future generations. Many agree with Finder that the memory of the Holocaust can be viewed as an inspiration to actively combat injustice.

Finder urged students to take Oskar Schindler’s actions as an example and to become upstanders rather than bystanders. As a former worker in his factory, Finder was saved by Schindler and describes her experiences as exactly like those portrayed in the movie Schindler’s List.

Schindler was a wealthy German factory owner who, during the Holocaust, felt it was his duty to aid the mortally threatened Jews by protecting them. He hired a factory full of Jewish workers who, as Finder told students, became his friends as well. He took many risks to save these friends from death at the hands of the Nazis.

Finder was born in Krakow, Poland in 1929 and lived comfortably with her parents and grandparents until the German invasion of Poland in 1939. At this time, Jews were forced to move into a nearby ghetto. Finder recalled attempting to say goodbye to her neighbors, former friends of hers, before moving to the ghetto. She knocked on their doors, but after they didn’t answer, she assumed no one was  home. Later, as she was leaving, she saw her neighbors peering through their windows to watch her walk away.

“I felt so totally abandoned [by my neighbors],” said Finder. “How could they all of a sudden not see us… not care?”

Finder described the ghetto as only about two avenues wide and four blocks long. She and her family shared a small apartment with four other Jewish families. Not long after moving in, her grandparents and father were taken away by German soldiers and never seen again.

The Kracow ghetto was eventually evacuated and both Rena and her mother were sent to Plaszow, a work camp. There, they were subjected to the infamous Amon Geoth, a man Rena described as “one of the most sadistic murderers of all time”.

Rena and her mother were two of the lucky ones, able to leave the camp to work in Schindler’s factory.

“Oskar Schindler was like our angel of hope,” said Finder. After working in his factory, Schindler became a father figure to her, and many other workers.

Schindler was the most prominent upstander Finder encountered in the Holocaust, and one of very few. Most Germans chose to ignore the events of the Holocaust, as did Finder’s neighbors.

Although they knew Finder and her family were in for the worst years of their lives- and that they might be killed- they chose to ignore this.

Finder uses her story to urge young people everywhere to learn this lesson; by standing up for ourselves and the causes we believe in, we can prevent injustices like the Holocaust from ever happening again. We all know that our lives aren’t exactly how we want them, but Finder just wants people to salvage as much as they can from this imperfect life that we all live.

“You can make a decision. You have the power to save the world. Be an upstander,” said Finder.