Cameron Penney
Dr. Eva Olsson visited Fort High last Tuesday to share her message on bullying, bystanders, and compassion for others.
In 1944, she was a 19-year-old girl living in Nazi-occupied Hungry.
She described herself as naive at the time, and believed the war would be over soon.
“We lived in a two-room house, no indoor plumbing,” Olsson recalled while noting 19 family members lived in the house.
“Some of us had to sleep on the floor, there wasn’t enough beds, but that was okay,” she noted.
“Why? I had a mom and I had a dad, two brothers, and two sisters,” she explained.
“I had a family—it didn’t last very long.”
It all changed on May 15, 1944.
“We were ordered to pack our bags,” Olsson said. “They told us we were being shipped to Germany to work in a brick factory.”
They were packed into box cars—each filled with almost 100 people.
“That was scary because we just really couldn’t understand [what was happening],” Olsson remarked.
“My mom was saying, ‘If they’re take us to a brick factory, then why are they taking pregnant women and disabled people?’
“She had a feeling it wasn’t the truth.”
They arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau—a place Dr. Olsson had never heard of.
“It didn’t take very long to find out what they did at Auschwitz-Birkenau,” she said.
When they were released from the box cars, they saw high towers, machine guns, electric fences, and guards.
“‘This doesn’t look like a brick factory,’ I told my mother,” Dr. Olsson recounted.
“Auschwitz-Birkenau was a killing factory.”
Some 1.2 million people were murdered in the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
Dr. Olsson held onto her niece when they arrived at the camp. A prisoner came and warned her to pass the child onto an elderly woman but did not explain why.
She reluctantly let go of her hand after hearing a third warning from the prisoner.
“Had I not let go of [my niece’s hand], I would not be sitting here,” Dr. Olsson admitted.
“I would have gone where most of my family went—except I didn’t know where that was,” she lamented.
As the prisoners were sorted into two groups, Dr. Olsson remained with her sister but was separated from the rest of her family.
Of her entire extended family, only she and her sister survived.
After the concentration camp, they were taken to a slave labour camp.
Dr. Olsson and her sister also spent time in Berken-Belsen—the same concentration camp where Anne Frank died.
“I saw prisoners eating grass—just to live another day,” she recalled.
“[On] April 15, 1945 at 11 [in the morning], we were liberated by the British,” Dr. Olsson said.
“Orders were given by the Gestapo to kill every prisoner on April 15 at 3 [in the afternoon],” she added.
“We were four hours from life or death.”
Dr. Olsson was fighting for her life and suffering from typhoid fever.
“Once I was released from the hospital, the Red Cross took us on a ferry boat to Sweden,” she said.
“We were quarantined to ensure we were free of disease.”
She met her future husband in Sweden and later emigrated to Canada with him.
Dr. Olsson, who received an honourary doctorate in education from Nipissing University, channelled this experience into speaking on topics such as hate.
“We don’t want to be hated, we don’t like it,” she noted.
“Then why are we saying it to others?” she wondered.
“I don’t like when I’m called names, and I don’t like it when I’m pushed around, but I don’t hate,” she added.
Her inspiration to share her story with others began with her grandchildren.
“I made it my mission to speak for the children whose voices where silenced by hate,” Dr. Olsson explained, adding she began speaking about her Holocaust experience in 1996.
“I was babysitting my grandchildren, and my grandson was six-and-a-half years old,” she said.
“He wanted to know how my mother died so I told him, ‘You are too young. When you are older, I will tell you.’
“When he was seven, the bus dropped him off and he said, ‘Baba, I’m older now,’ so I figured if he was that determined to know, then I need tell him,” she reasoned.
When her granddaughter was in a Grade 7/8 class, she was assigned to interview her grandmother on the war.
“She took her assignment in and I was called in a week later,” Dr. Olsson said. “That’s how it started.
“The next thing was the high school and the school board.”
Since then, Dr. Olsson has spoken to more than 1.5 million people, sharing her story in schools, churches, and universities.
Sharing her story feels the same as when she began.
“It has not gotten easier,” she admitted. “It’s so fresh and always there.”
In 2007, Dr. Olsson returned to her homeland to film a documentary with a filmmaker, his wife, and her book editor.
“That was absolutely devastating,” she remarked.
Her old homes had since been demolished.
“There was nothing to go back to,” she said.
An author of two books, Dr. Olsson reminded Fort High students of the importance of not being a bystander—and to not use the word hate but rather, “I don’t like.”
“Even if you don’t like someone, it’s okay,” she reasoned.
“But you must accept and respect,” she stressed.
