My senior year of high school I joined a program called Witness Theater. This program allowed teenagers to meet with Holocaust survivors weekly and discuss their past and their journey to America. One of the members, Jack, told me about the horrific circumstances and conditions he was forced to live in. One day, during the Holocaust, Jack and his two friends took silver spoons to the jeweler and had him melt them and mold them into rings. Jack and his friends inscribed on the inside of them the names of their family members and their birthdays. As time went on the events of the Holocaust heightened and intensified; Jack and his father was separated from their family. The two men were chosen to work in labor camps while the rest of his family were sent to death camps. Jack’s father eventually got ill and jack took on the responsibility to make sure the Nazis didn’t notice. Many times he wanted to give up, but it was the silver ring on his finger that gave him strength to keep moving forward. Without this symbol and reminder of where he came from he would have no sense of direction as to where he was going. Jack characterizes this ring as the only thing that got him through the terrible times of the Holocaust. This ring can be found today on display in the Holocaust Museum.
