“I’ve been told many times that my story, the story of the Holocaust, needs to be told to you young people,” 94-year-old survivor Regina Rummel said to a theater packed with about 200 high school students. “Why? I’m not sure, but apparently you need to hear it.”
The longtime Corte Madera resident spoke about her childhood in Nazi-occupied France at Redwood High School in Larkspur on Tuesday.
“What I’d like to say before I start my story is that every story that you hear from somebody who’s lived through those very difficult days will be different, really different,” she said.
Throughout the speech, Rummel spoke of her life as the daughter of a Polish Jewish tailor living in Paris before her family’s move to the South of France amid rising antisemitism. She painted a picture of fond childhood memories before the war, and then the struggle to survive during the German occupation.
At first, her family lived in a home with other Jewish refugees as people fled from the north in droves.
“I had to share my bed with a perfect stranger, and I didn’t like it, but we did it because times were very difficult, times were scary, and we helped each other,” she said. “This is what we did. We all helped each other. We did everything in our power to help others.”
They remained safe for a while, until one fateful winter day in 1942 when the Germans arrived in their town. A family friend who was a gendarme, or French police officer, came to warn Rummel’s family that the Germans had just taken over the police station and had asked for a list of every Jew in town.
“He said, ‘Get out. Get out now. Just grab whatever and get the hell out of here. They’re coming to pick you up,’” Rummel recalled through tears. “I remember grabbing a jacket, a sweater and my books. I grabbed my books. I wasn’t going to leave without my books.”
Her family managed to evade the Nazis by staying on the run for over a year, assuming false identities and hiding on several farms owned by non-Jewish families.
I had to share my bed with a perfect stranger, and I didn’t like it, but we did it because times were very difficult, times were scary, and we helped each other.
In addition to sharing the hardships she endured, Rummel spoke of moments of joy in her early life before the war, like the book club she had with her friends at school and dancing at her aunt’s wedding.
“It wasn’t like a wedding familiar with you Marinites, you rich young people who live in Marin County,” she chuckled. “You have no idea what a wedding in that little village in Poland was like.”
She described the event as being similar to the wedding scene in “Fiddler on the Roof,” simple yet joyful with music and dancing.
“That was the first time and the last time that I ever saw them because they all perished,” she said. “Not one, not one survived. Nobody. The babies, children, in-laws, friends, family. Nobody survived. Everybody died. They were all picked up by the Germans and killed.”
After the war, Rummel’s family immigrated to the U.S. as soon as they could. She eventually made her way to the West Coast and has lived in Marin County for over three decades.
Rummel was accompanied on stage by her daughter, Giselle Casey, and her friend Ally Abrahms, who each provided support as she occasionally became overwhelmed with emotion while sharing her experience.
The event was organized by Chabad of Marin and marked the third time Rummel spoke to students at Redwood High School. The campus has a recent history with hate speech, including a particularly disturbing incident in 2020 when an Instagram account purportedly created by students called on classmates to participate in “organized antisemitism,” which included Holocaust denial and threats of rape against Jewish students.
Following the talk, a group of students from the advanced music program performed “The Weight” by the Band as a way of showing appreciation to Rummel for her testimony.
For Jewish Redwood seniors Sophia Rubel and Alexandra Sumski, hearing Rummel’s story hit close to home.
“It is really important to hear people like her talk,” said Sumski. “It really brings up a lot of feelings within people and reminds me of my own family and stories that I’ve been hearing my whole life.”
Rubel, whose grandmother survived a concentration camp, said she feels that it’s important to educate people on the horrors of the Holocaust and to fight against Holocaust denial.
“I think these days it’s especially important as we’re getting further and further away from it, to have our generation and teens be educated on what truly did happen,” said Rubel.