Witnessing Claude Romney Summary

Witnessing Claude Romney’s live presentation was much different from reading other testimonies, or watching interviews and documentaries about the holocaust. Since the round ups and arrests happened when she was a very young child, she did not have vivid memories of the events herself. Nonetheless, Romney recited the stories of what her mother had told her, and that did not lessen the impact it had on her audience. Seeing a holocaust survivor face to face, as a solid and tangible human being who went through all the unfathomable events, that one can only read about in books, was a very eye opening experience. Previously, we watched many videos of interviews featuring survivors, but the concept of watching a person that is framed behind a screen,

Moreover, only reading about the statistics and facts, does not help us fully understand the victim’s discourse on an individual and intimate level. Reading about numbers and information makes it almost impossible for us to grasp that all the millions of victims, were from different walks of life, and that these numbers represent a wide demographic; each person with their own unique and human like attributes. By witnessing Romney’s presentation, and by looking more closely at survivor testimonies, I noticed a common theme; everyone was affected by the holocaust one way or another. The Nazis made sure none of their victims were shown mercy, and had a choice in their destinies. Every single person - victim, bystander, or persecutor - was affected by the holocaust in one way or another. Many child survivors, like Romney, embody the aftermath of that human tragedy, and represent the aftershocks of an impact that indefinitely changed human history. These aftershocks might not be so explicit, but learning about the holocaust makes us view humanity differently, and that in itself is an aftershock. We realize that some humans can be more malleable, evil, cowardice, and immoral than we could have ever