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By Tami Jo Nix - The Madera Tribune

Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone, far left, speaks with Madera High School students after her talk on the experiences illustrated in the Steve Speilberg documentary, "The Last Days."

Photo by: Tami Jo Nix

Renee Firestone has A12307 tattooed on her left arm. It is against the Jewish religion to have a tattoo. She believes Adolph Hitler numbered the Jews in this manner to prove he was above God and to keep the Jewish people from being buried in a Jewish cemetery, she said.

Photo by: Tami Jo Nix

Mike Hinton, history teacher at Madera High School, took his students' understanding of World War II to a higher level on Monday with a guest speaker, Holocaust survivor Renee Firestone.

The former Beverly Hills fashion designer is one of the people responsible for the 1999 Steven Speilberg documentary, "The Last Days." Hinton has showed the film to his class to introduce and illustrate the Nazi atrocities to Jewish people during the war.

Firestone is originally from Hungary. She was incarcerated in Auschwitz-Birkenau.

Through the Survivors of the Shoah Visual Foundation, she and others have interviewed and video taped 52,000 testimonies from survivors and witnesses from 57 countries in 32 languages.

"This is our proof for the people who say the Holocaust never happened," Firestone said.

One of the students asked Firestone what the living conditions were like in the concentration camps.

"There were no living conditions in the camps, only existing conditions," said Firestone. "You managed to exist until you were killed or until you died."

Her mother and sister were both killed by the fascists.

After the Allied Forces liberated the camp, the 70 pound refugee returned to the family home but she found no one there. Fate intervened and she accidentally met up with her older brother, five years her senior. Together they searched for their father.

They learned that their father might be in a hospital in Checslovakia. They traveled to the hospital and saw that their father's name was on the patient list for a room with approximately 20 beds in it. Laying in each bed were living skeletons, survivors of the death march in the snow. They checked each patient but could not find their father. As they were leaving the room, their father recognized his son and called out to him, she said.

"This skeleton called out my brother's name," Firestone said.

He died three and a half months later of tuberculosis.

"We got to talk to our father and be with him when he died," she said.

Her father, who worked as a tailor before the war, asked them if they had returned to the family home in Hungary since the liberation. On the day the Nazis came to take him away, he hid some American currency in an aluminum milk can he left in the back yard.

Leaving her brother at their father's bedside, she journeyed back to their home in Uzhorod. Because the military had the use of all the trains, she said, she had to hitchhike on the train back to her home.

When she arrived, she found the back yard had all been dug up. She explained that after the Jews were taken away, the Hungarians dug up the yard looking for hidden valuables, then the Germans came through and dug some more, followed by the Russians who dug some more. But laying in the yard, still intact, was the milk can.

When she forced the rusted top off of the can, she discovered it was filled with American dollar bills, approximately $350. Following her father's death, she and her brother used this money to start their lives over in Prague. She eventually married an acquaintance of her brothers and they immigrated to the United States.

These days the 83-year-old Firestone devotes much of her time speaking to groups about her experiences.

"I feel it is my duty to make the world aware of the Holocaust because the six million who were murdered have no voice," she said.

Tami Jo Nix Tami Jo Nix is a senior staff writer, photographer and community / features writer for the Madera Tribune. You can contact Tami Jo at 674.8134 ext. 231 or e-mail at tamijo (at) maderatribune.net Tami Jo also handles community calendar items and wedding announcements. The Madera Tribune online subscription To subscribe or log on, CLICK HERE. For more information first, CLICK HERE.