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12

July 13 • 2017

jn

LEFT: Lake High School senior Parker Lane escorts Paula Marks-Bolton during the school’s
graduation ceremony in Millbury, Ohio. RIGHT: Marks-Bolton wipes away tears of joy as she
stands with Lake High School’s graduating class.

family during the Holocaust, and her
message emphasizes love and accep-
tance. She implores those she meets
to make a difference in the world.
“It should never make a difference
what nationality, what religion or
what color a person’s skin is,” Marks-
Bolton said. “Reach out to the ones
who cannot help themselves, wel-
come that stranger and defend those
who cannot defend themselves.”
Marks-Bolton said she was as
taken with the students as they were
with her.
“They entered my heart and soul.
They are so loving,” she said. “I
was overwhelmed with love. They
just stuck in my heart. We are con-
nected.”

PAULA’S STORY

Eye said Marks-Bolton had talked
about seeing her two daughters
earn their high school and college
degrees, but never received a diplo-
ma herself.
“The Nazis came through our vil-
lage when I was 13 and burned all
our books. I was never able to return
to school,” Marks-Bolton said.
Soon after, she was separated
from her parents and taken to the
Ozarkow ghetto where there were
hundreds of parentless children,
all praying for their mothers and
fathers, according to the oral history
she gave to the Holocaust Memorial
Center. She remained in that ghetto
about three months until she was
taken to the Lodz ghetto with only
the clothes on her back and a photo-
graph of her mother. She worked in
the ghetto making braids from straw
that they lined in barrels for the
Germans and making trench coats
in a factory.
Eventually, the Germans came
and packed the Jews into cattle
train cars on which they traveled
four days and nights to Auschwitz.

Meeting them at the camp was
Dr. Josef Mengele, himself, Marks-
Bolton recalls, wearing white and
only saying two words, either “Left”
or “Right.” Three days later, she was
taken by cattle car to Ravensbruck,
where she spent two weeks. Then
it was on to Muhlhausen, which
was a newer facility in Thüringen,
Germany. There, she worked in an
ammunition factory along with 500
other girls.
She was there eight months before
German guards rounded up the
women and marched them, mostly
shoeless, for two days to Bergen-
Belsen, “a crazy house, where there
were no toilets and mounds of dead
bodies,” she said.
The camp was liberated by the
British in 1945.
“After the war, I met my first hus-
band at a displaced persons camp,”
said Marks-Bolton, who also studied
with ORT’s School of Design and
eventually became a dressmaker on
Detroit’s Avenue of Fashion.
She and her husband were brought
to the U.S. in 1949 by her relatives. “My
husband and I studied English togeth-
er so we could come to America, but
we were never able to earn our diplo-
mas,” said Marks-Bolton.
So the students decided to make it
happen.
“It’s really special to have her walk
with our class,” senior Kayla Saffran of
Northwood, Ohio, said.
She would have graduated in 1944,
so Marks-Bolton’s special tassel
includes a charm for that year.
“What it means to me after all these
years to be graduating in the United
States of America, in the beautiful
country which I love so much, it’s the
greatest honor,” she said. •

Reprinted with permission from the Toledo
Blade. Managing Editor Jackie Headapohl
added to this report.

