I spent my afternoon with a holocaust survivor. He was in Auschwitz for two years where he ate only one piece of bread each day, he was beaten, and lived in horrible condition. This man is the only living holocaust survivor in the Aquitaine region of France. He is 95 years old and not only that he lived in the concentration camp, but also had a lung cancer four years ago and is living with ONE lung today, and also had a stroke a few years ago. He is walking, speaking, and moving very well. In fact, he is very into technology! In other words, he is a technology freak. He has a Windows XP computer, surfs on the internet, uses Adobe Photoshop, and all kinds of stuff with the computer! He showed me images onof the concentration camp where he was on the computer and jews living there, and my goodness, I almost cried. In fact, when he showed me an image of dead jews, I had to literally turn my head away. I just could not look at it. He told me the whole story and I just thought how could he possibility survive! I learned something that I did not know. When he and other jews who were able to return to their homes and find their parents after the WWII, their parents did not believe their stories. That’s because what Nazis did to them was beyond more uncomprehensible. That is one of the reasons that for years after WWII, this history, the history of WWII, did not exist in the textbooks throughout Europe. It has been only since a few years that the history of the holocust have been published in the school textbooks. My french penpal, Anais, who I am staying with, did a huge research project on holocust with her class. There was a competition throughout France and the objective of the competition was that who did the best research gets to visit Auschwitz. Therefore, her class won and they went there: Anais told me that it was the most meaningful trip and was very moving; We also discussed a little about my family history to why my great-grandparents came to US and Canada before WWII. I need to do some research on that because it will be important to tell my future generations about this history.

I am going to see fireworks tonight! Tomorrow is France’s Independence Day!