Stolen Childhood: Lessons from Paula Marks-Bolton’s Testimony

By Nicole Brabant
From the blog series titled, “The Endurance and Relevance of Survivor Testimonials in the 21^st Century” by students of Professor Sylvia Taschka’s ‘Nazi Germany’ class at Wayne State University. In partnership with the Appelbaum Family Compass Fund.

Imagine being torn from your family at the age of only 13, never to see a majority of them again. This was the reality for Paula Marks-Bolton, born on August 1, 1926, in Ozorków, Poland.

Life During World War II

By the time she turned 14, she had to walk with a cane due to malnutrition, her ration only being very little bread, salami, and sugar for the week. While Paula’s testimonial is incredibly insightful into how a 13-year-old girl’s life was during the war, it leaves me wondering how she was able to endure the heartbreak of losing her family and survive the near starvation and the physical weaknesses she faced.

Around the time when the war broke out, traditional gender roles in Germany were incredibly stereotypical. As a rule, German men were sent to war, while women and children stayed at home. I thought it was interesting that in Paula’s testimonial, there are no signs of Jewish women or children being spared the brutalities of the Holocaust. In the extermination camps, the stereotypes did not matter; most women and children endured the same fate as men. Paula’s mother was beaten in front of her own eyes, highlighting an example of the brutality that spared no one.

Reflecting on Paula’s Story

The core message I discovered in this testimonial was how quickly your childhood can be ripped from you. At the age of 13, Paula, who had been separated from her own family, was taking care of another woman’s child in a ghetto. She had to work three different jobs, lived in fear, and was starving. By the time she was liberated at 19 years old, her childhood had been replaced with years of indescribable hardship.

Something that I learned about the Holocaust that I did not know before was how fast your life can change in front of your eyes. Paula had to witness how her youngest brother was taken and thrown in a truck, along with many other Jewish boys. She ran after the car sobbing, wanting to catch her brother. She never saw him again. The same happened with her parents, whom she also never saw again. Only one of her three brothers survived and she lost everyone else in her family.

Lessons from the Holocaust

Being able to learn about the Holocaust through such a personal story has been so moving and helped me come to a better understanding of this tragedy. I would encourage everyone to gain more knowledge on the Holocaust and the Third Reich, as it will change how you view history. Not only am I now able to find the parallels between history and current events as a whole, but I can empathize even more with the entire Jewish population on a more intimate level because of my deepened knowledge of the tragic events that took place during the Holocaust.