A student listens to Clara Knopfler as she speaks.

Eighth grade students at Fillmore Middle School had a rare opportunity Tuesday May 25th. They heard the testimony of a Holocaust survivor, Clara Knopfler. As Clara related her story of life in Transylvania she emphasized she was the same age as FMS students when her country was occupied by Hungarians, Hitler‘s first allies in World War II. As she spoke the silence in the FMS gym was palpable. Eighth graders have been reading the Diary of Anne Frank in Language Arts and studying the Holocaust in their history classes. They sat mesmerized by actually hearing the history from a woman who lived it. As Clara explained, she was first made to live in the ghetto, an old brick factory with no restrooms. She was then transported to Auschwitz and later ended up in Riga concentration camp where she made gun powder for the German army. Luckily she lived through these trials with her mother at her side, Pepi Deutsch, who’s spirit led she and her daughter through the darkest times. From Riga she went to the Eastern front to dig anti-tank trenches. There she confronted a German soldier beating her mother. By the simple, but strong statement, “don’ t you have a mother?” actually got him to stop hitting her mother.

Lastly Clara and her mother were forced to endure a death march, being led away by their German captors from the Russians. When her German guards one night along the march just left , she and her mother were finally free. Free to do what? They chose to walk home to Transylvania, it took them three hard months. She credits her Christian friends at home with helping she and her mother try to rebuild.

Clara later emigrated to the United States in 1962. She married and has one son. Her mother stayed her constant companion until her death at age 101 in 1999. She speaks frequently in schools, churches, temples, colleges and her book "I Am Still Here: My Mother's Voice" was published in 2007. She and her mother were the only ones who survived in her immediate family, the only two out of thirty nine.

As Clara spoke, you could tell she was a teacher, who though retired, is still teaching. She is teaching the next generation to never forget and to never let it happen again. That is her mission and goal of her life, to keep speaking while she can. As she spoke to the next generation that would be the torch bearers of her story and the history of the Holocaust, she held their attention raptly. She stated that one day they can tell their children and grand children, I heard it from a survivor.