- Hi, my name is Anurandha Roy and I am from Bangladesh.
I'm an international student here.
- [Woman] Can you speak up? - Yeah, sure.
My name is Anurandha Roy and I am from Bangladesh.
I'm an international student here.
When I was little, my grandparents and my parents
they always talk about Second World War.
But I never had any chance to meet anybody in person
to know about the Holocaust or the Second World War.
I came from a family where they believe that
we should always educate ourself.
Because they think that education is something that
help us to move forward, and that
actually help us to do the right thing.
So when I was eight years old,
my father handed me a book of Second World War.
He told me to know about the history through the photograph.
I opened the book and I was horrified.
To the devastation in Europe, the photographs were not
enough to satisfy the question in my mind.
I keep questioning about the people who suffered, who died.
And what happened to them after the war.
My wish came true when I met Stephen Berger.
To know about the holocaust through him
was very graphic, informative and very inspiring.
Hello, sir.
Stephen Berger, he was born in Hungary.
His father was sent into the Soviet as a mechanic, right?
- No. - No?
At the age of 16, he was in Hungary
with his mother and his younger sister.
As the only man in the family, he has very big
responsibility to take care of his family members.
When Germany invaded Hungary, it was very sad for Berger
that he couldn't go to school,
and he missed going to school, and he missed his friends.
He couldn't use the public transport,
and he had to wear a yellow star all the time.
In other words, his life became very restrained.
And he talked to me about (foreign language),
the ghetto, the name? - Ghetto, yes.
- Ghetto life.
He told me about his life over there,
and I was really shocked and I was really sad
to know how the ghetto life was.
To us, when we hear the word ghetto,
sometimes we don't know what is it all about.
Sometimes, we don't know the depth of the word.
But when somebody actually was in a ghetto in Hungary,
and how the life was difficult, then I understand,
that's not any fancy word we see or we hear or we use.
Actually life in ghetto was very, very, very difficult.
And he told me about what happened after that.
And I was completely in shock when he told me
the three days when he was moved from Hungary to Austria.
He told me it was a cart van and
he had to stand there for three days.
And he couldn't move, he was standing there.
He couldn't sit, there's not even a space
to move his shoulder.
They had no food, it was very, very,
very difficult in the cart.
And three days later he went to Austria.
And in the cart, I think he saw
that some people were committing suicide, right?
- Right.
- And that was to me, unbelievable.
In the cart, it's overcrowded, and
you see somebody's
dying because they cannot take the physical pain.
It's like totally unbelievable and shocking to me.
And after that he was moved to...
Strasshof camp? - Strasshof, yes.
- Yes, in Austria.
And he worked there, and...
he told me about among many things, he told me
how much he worked hard to get his spectacles.
And the first time he heard the word, Auschwitz camp.
Stories like that, he didn't have spectacles,
and he went to buy spectacles,
and he had to plan that a lot.
But finally when he went to buy the spectacles from a person
and he saw the spectacles in a huge room
from the floor to the ceiling, millions of spectacles,
and he asked the person how did he get that.
And he said, the person said that these are the spectacles
from the Auschwitz Jewish people.
That means millions of spectacles belongs to
millions of people that were killed in Auschwitz camp.
And this is the first time he heard about Auschwitz camp.
And we move along and we talk about
what happened after that.
And he told me his hard life in concentration camp.
And when he told me,
I was very happy to hear
when he told me that there's nothing in this world,
and nothing can be compared with freedom.
This is how he told me, that in 1945,
the Soviet was in Austria
to make Austria free,
and he went with his sister and mother
in apartment buildings.
And he hid his mother and sister in the basement,
in the storage box, and sat on a bench
with the building tenants.
An SS officer knocked on the door and asked
if there were any Jews over there.
The tenants declined, that no person is there.
After some time passed, as they opened the front door,
they found that the SS officer didn't come in
because he had been shot by Soviet Army.
And that time, Mr. Berger realized that they were liberated.
That happiness, that he understood that we are free,
now we can leave, that simple thing.
And he felt happiness through his veins,
and when he told me that,
I pictured myself over there and,
I try to picture myself over there
but I don't think I could have realized
as much happiness as he felt that time.
He always concludes that it was luck by chance
that he is still alive.
He says that he lost 26 family members,
most of them were killed in Auschwitz concentration camp.
A few years later he came to United States.
Life wasn't easy here as an immigrant,
but at least, he said, he had the freedom of right
and freedom of speech in this country.
To me, it is not easy to interpret the feelings
of humiliation, discrimination and fear of death.
As a citizen of the 21st century, sometimes I question
my duty to the community and to the society.
I strongly believe that the future is in our hands.
And Stephen Berger said that, "To see the future,
we must look backward, whereas backward is history."
We must know about the history, and educate ourself
so that we should never believe in social hatred
and political manipulation.
We should evaluate our responsibilities
so that we can build a better future and a better society.
- Very good. - Thank you.
- I think she did a very good job.
- Thank you.
- But as a survivor, you know my antenna is always up.
We have a special talent to
smell and see if anything wrong in this world.
And I just want to give you one example.
We had a terrible natural disaster last week in Haiti.
And the world poured the whole heart out to them.
People were coming from all over the world
to help those poor, unfortunate people.
But in 1944,
the whole world was silent
when millions were burned in the concentration camps.
(applause)
- [Woman] I had the same question every day.
Every single day.
- So here is a very good lesson to learn.
That the world has two standards:
one for us, and one for the rest of the world.
Thank you.
- I think that, as I listened...
as I listened to Anurandha's presentation
and Edie Weinstein's presentation,
the thoughts in my mind were,
as much as you hear about a story,
you never really hear the whole story.
And there is so much depth to these stories that of course
an interview of two or three hours is just the beginning.
And I think keeping that in mind,
that we have so much to learn about this moment in history.
And to take from these lessons, and again move forward.
So thank you again. - Thank you.
- And we'll transition to the next guest.
(applause)