June 17



USA//NEW JERSEY:

Holocaust Survivors Graduate High School

In Mays Landing, 28 Holocaust survivors who never got the chance to
attend high school were honored with vocational certificates Thursday at
an emotional graduation ceremony.

''I'm making believe I'm graduating,'' said 75-year-old Fanny Lesser, who
finished the fourth grade in her native Czechoslovakia before her school
was closed by the war. ''I didn't have a chance to graduate. I wasn't
allowed.''

The survivors, who were sent to concentration camps or went into hiding
from the Nazis when they would have been attending high school, were given
diploma-style certificates commemorating their contributions in
''lifetimes of achievement.''

Richard Stockton College of New Jersey, which has a Holocaust and genocide
studies program, identified the survivors and arranged for the ceremony.

Rose Rechnic, 79, was living in Bendzin, Poland, when the war began and
her formal education ended. ''We were just due to go back to school in
September and there was no more school for us and no more education,''
she said.

Her mother, father, sister and brother were killed by the Nazis, but
Rechnic survived two years at the Auschwitz death camp. She went on to
marry, have two daughters and work as a Hebrew teacher, a courtroom
interpreter and an interior designer.

''I feel accomplished with all the things I've done without education,''
she said.

''What I am going to do with it other than frame it, I don't know.''


On the Net: Richard Stockton College: http://www2.stockton.edu/

(source: Associated Press)