By Whitney Kiepura
Executive Opinion Editor
Third and fourth period students got to meet a living Anne Frank.
Author Elisabeth Bettina and Holocaust survivor Urusla Korn-Celig came to talk to students about a reinvented part of World War II. Photos from concentration camps from Auschwitz are world-renown.    But the photos from the Italian camps is comparable  to finding an angel hair pasta noodle in lasagna. It just doesn’t happen.
As Bettina began to give her speech about the impact of her Grandmother’s tiny Village made to the Jewish Internees,  an interesting picture popped up on the PowerPoint: A large group of people sat on the stairs of a church. Policemen and internees sat shoulder to shoulder, all smiling at the camera.
There were no “striped pajamas” from Auschwitz, no Stars of David emblazoned on the Jew’s chests; no arm bands could be seen.
Clearly, this was not the German concentration camps.
Throughout the Italian country side, the Italian people managed to save 80 percent of the Jews sent to concentration camps. A fourth of which were foreign born.
Bettina came to this little village when she was ten. But she didn’t learn that village housed a concentration camp until she was older.
Her interest then sparked, she found a list of Internees who had been there during the war, and then through a series of events, contacted Korn-Celig, whose father had been housed at the camp from 1940 to 1941.
But to get the whole story of survival, you’ll have to read the book, “It Happened in Italy” by Elisabeth Bettina.
This unique view into the Holocaust shows a type of empathy not found elsewhere in history. Like Bettina said, “If you’re not indifferent, things can be different.”