By Rosemary Peters
Screams wrench the night. The smell of burning flesh fills your nostrils making you gag. You've lost your mother, your brothers, and your grandfather.
You're afraid it is their burning bodies your smell as you sit feeling utterly alone in a strange room that is crammed full of other strangers.
This is a reality that 80 year-old Holocaust survivor Alice Lok Cahana has had to live with for the past 65 years of her life.
"Right away they separated us. First the children and the mothers and then they selected people they thought they could use for work. It was a big commotion," Cahana recalls. "My grandfather was an older man. He was taken immediately to the crematory. My little five year-old brother, my 10- year-old brother, my grandfather, my mother... How could they put little children into the crematory?"
"We didn't do any wrong," she adds.
Cahana has invited all UP students to take part in a conversation with her today at 3 p.m. in Buckley Center 163 as a way to celebrate Holocaust Remembrance Week. This conversation will consist of her experience in the Holocaust, how she has worked through it and what UP students can do to remember the important tragedy.
Cahana was taken to Auschwitz in a cattle train at the age of 15 and was forced to stay there until the prisoners were liberated toward the end of World War II.
According to Cahana, one day in Auschwitz was an eternity. "You cannot image what a day meant and how terrible it was," Cahana said. "There was no numbers to count that time."
A typical day in Auschwitz began and ended with a cup of black coffee. Most of the time, the coffee had sticks floating at the top. The food they were forced to eat wasn't any better.
"You couldn't eat it, but you were so hungry that you had to," Cahana said. "My sister and I promised each other that we would never tell my mother how bad it was."
When Cahana was finally rescued, she was incredibly sick. In the hubbub of the liberation, she even lost her sister. She was taken to an interim home with many other children. She was terrified that she would be alone forever, when one day her doctor brought her news.
"The Red Cross had a list after the liberation. My father saw my name on the list," Cahana said. "My doctor came and told me that father was alive. All of the children who survived and were with me wanted to hear my story."
According to Cahana, her story gave them hope that their father or mother or any other relative was still alive.
"Unfortunately for many that didn't happen," Cahana said.
After Cahana was well enough, she went to Budapest to reunite withher father, her only surviving family member. Together they went to Israel. While in Israel, Cahana met and married her husband and after a short time, she and her husband decided to move to Houston, Texas.
While in Texas, Cahana started to become deeply involved in art. She even went to University of Houston and Rice University and took classes to improve her artistic skills.
"At first, I didn't want to talk about the Holocaust, but then slowly, slowly, every painting that I did was a story from the Holocaust," Cahana said. "I decided that maybe this is why I survived so I could tell my story."
Cahana's art has become so well-known that she even presented a piece of art to the pope. The artwork is currently on display in the Vatican.
"It was very, very meaningful for me," Cahana said. "He was the same age I was when this happened."
According to Cahana, her art is to be a source of remembrance for the Holocaust, not an emblem of hatred.
"There is no hatred in my art," Cahana said. "My art is saying that we cannot hate or harm each other. We need to shake hands and respect each other's religion and being because in the eyes of God we are all the same."
Cahana has also been in a film directed by Steven Spielberg which followed her return to her hometown and to the death camps. The film won an Oscar for Best Documentary in 1999.
"If we don't remember it, it will happen again," Cahana said. "We have to know all the details and why it happened. It is something we all can learn from and it is something we need to make sure can never ever happen again."
