Two days after Holocaust survivor Marion Blumenthal Lazan received the German Order of Merit in January, she spoke to students at Covert Elementary School in South Hempstead, N.Y. A few days later she held a virtual visit with students in Sioux Falls, S.D. It’s a rigorous pace, but at 89, Lazan is a woman on a mission.

“This is the last generation that will hear first-hand from a Holocaust survivor, so we are running as fast as we can to reach young people,” said Lazan, a life member of Hadassah and one-time president of the Hewlett, N.Y., chapter. According to a comprehensive new report released by the Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, fewer than 250,000 survivors are alive today, 18 percent of whom reside in the United States.

Lazan was nearly 6 when she, her parents and brother escaped Nazi Germany for Holland. Eventually, they were caught and spent six years in various concentration camps, including Bergen-Belsen. All four survived, but her father died of typhus after liberation. In 1948, the remaining family immigrated to America and settled in Peoria, Ill. There she met her husband of more than 70 years, Nathaniel. They raised three children and now dote on nine grandchildren and 12 great-grandchildren.

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Lazan started speaking publicly about her experiences in 1979, but it wasn’t until her memoir, Four Perfect Pebbles, was published in 1996 that she began zigzagging the globe to speak with students. 

She has received many awards, and there’s even a high school in Germany named in her honor. But it’s the Order of Merit—Germany’s highest civilian honor—that she says feels the most personal and poignant. Given the history of 80 years ago, Lazan said, she could never imagine that Germany “would someday give so prestigious an award to a Jewish woman.”

As she sees it, the award, which comes at a time of surging antisemitism, illustrates Germany’s commitment to spread the lessons of the Holocaust, which Lazan said boil down to “kindness and empathy. How we treat each other is entirely up to us.”

Cathryn J. Prince