ניצול שואה שהפך לאיש חינוך: "המנהיגים שלנו אינם מלמדים את הדור הצעיר מהי אחריות"

Sammy Steinman is a Holocaust survivor who remained silent for much of his life. That changed after a chance encounter led him to embrace his story and share it. Now he speaks to students around the world about resilience, responsibility, and the freedom that comes with forgiveness. I want to quote the part of your book where you say, I am not what happened to me, I am what I choose to be. Please tell us a bit about that quote. What do you remember that happened during the Holocaust that you were part of? You were very young at the time. When my parents and I were deported together by the Romanians, by the way, not by the Germans, I was only a year and a half. I knew that I'm a Holocaust survivor because my father always felt guilty. How come he did not save a family member from 42 people only to survive? And I tried to ignore being a Holocaust survivor. But there were two things that happened that really changed my life. The Holocaust Museum in Washington, D.C., for 16 years in a row, once a year, closed its doors to the general public for two days. It opened it up only to the Holocaust survivors, their children, and their liberators. I never went. However, on November 1st and November 2nd of 2003, I decided to go. There were over 8,000 people from all over the world. And at the table where I was sitting, I met a man born in the same city, had been in the same camp, the same years, 1941, 1944. He was deported when he was eight months old. I was a year and a half. And that is the difference with your audience and you are experiencing. This is living history, not reading from the books, movies, whatever. And what happened is, because I met him, had the opportunity to ask him different questions, for the first time I felt that I belonged to both generations, Holocaust survivors and children of Holocaust survivors. And in 2008, I got my first assignment to speak to sixth graders. One sixth grader wrote, P.S., your story was overwhelming, and I promise I'll pass your story to my children. I realized for the first time that I have something important to say. And that became my mission in life, to educate the next generation, nationally and internationally. I know there's two other things that are very important to you, and then you teach this and educate people. It's taking responsibility and learning to disagree. Please tell us about it. In a civil way. Okay, one of the things that I do, I'm planting the seed. I probably will never see it on my lifetime. But what I would like to do is to see in every school a curriculum totally separate from anything else. Just like you teach math, you teach reading, geography, history, there should be something about teaching dialogue. Dialogue encompasses every aspect of life. What happens is, if you pay attention to the news, TV, and everything else, our leaders do not teach the young people responsibility according to them. It's always somebody else's fault or circumstances. I have been homeless. I live under the poverty line. But I was betrayed by people that I trusted with my life. By taking responsibility, because I did something that caused, okay, for me to be in that situation. And I started to think about it, and I said, what did I do that led to the point that I became homeless? And I realized these were people that I trusted with my life. I gave them cash, and I did not put anything to writing. Prove it. And so then I said, you know something? They are not guilty. They took advantage of my stupidity. By taking responsibility, suddenly the need for revenge, for hate, and everything else was gone. I became a free man. But here is the interesting part. I had to do two things for myself. Number one, I had to forgive myself for making those mistakes. And number two, we are kind to many other people. But if we make mistakes, boy, do we blame ourselves and dwell on it. And I said, you know something? It happened, and I decided to be kind to myself. And I'm a free man. And this is one of the things that people, we have to teach young people to be responsible for their actions. Absolutely. I think you really touch on something that almost goes beyond the human realm. It goes into a divine realm, and that is instead of something goes wrong, instead of blaming someone or attacking someone, you take a step back and say, hey, you know, maybe I did something wrong. Let me analyze what I did. And you're right. When you see that, it's such an amazing liberation. So that's a message that can really change the world, I think.