Holocaust Remembrance Day Speaker Offers Message of Hope

Her journey to contentment was by no means a simple or easy one. Students sat at rapt attention as Preston shared the details of her life under Nazi occupation and the story of how one person’s kindness saved her. Preston was born in a small city in Transylvania, an area whose political boundaries had changed many times over the years and which was part of Hungary during her youth. The only child of a prosperous family, with a Jewish father and a Catholic mother who converted to Judaism, Preston said her early years were defined by culture and comfort, even luxury. There were featherbeds piled so high that she had to climb a little ladder to go to sleep; shelves crammed with books; dresses with white lace collars. There were family dinners attended by some 28 members of her father’s family, where she basked in love and attention as the youngest child present. (Matter of factly, she told the Rivers audience that all 28 of those relatives later perished at the hands of the Nazis.) “It was a wonderful, spoiled childhood,” said Preston. Even the arrival of a strict German governess—a “professional bully,” said Preston—couldn’t ruin her happy memories of those times. 

She was not yet five years old when the Germans invaded Hungary. Everything changed, slowly at first and then rapidly: Jews were forbidden to attend college, then high school. They were banned from certain benches in the park, as well as from public spaces like pools and coffee houses. Eventually, the Nazis constructed a ghetto to confine anyone found to have even “a drop of Jewish blood,” and Preston’s beloved father was sent there. Her mother, as a Catholic by birth, was allowed to remain in their home, and she tried to hide Preston. But that became increasingly perilous, and discovery seemed inevitable when help arrived from an unexpected quarter.

A young Christian peasant woman who delivered the family’s milk offered to take Preston to her farm, where she might be hidden more safely. Earlier, Preston’s mother, a successful dressmaker, had made the young woman a gift of a wedding dress, and she wanted to return the kindness. “That dress saved my life,” said Preston simply.

Preston’s troubles were far from over. The little girl had to stay hidden in a hayloft, with only spiders and mice for company. She couldn’t play outside, enter the main house, or do anything else that might draw suspicion. One day, the Nazis arrived, announcing that they’d heard that the farm woman was hiding a Jew. They ransacked the house and then turned their attention to the hayloft, where Preston had hidden herself. The soldiers stabbed the hay with their bayonets; one landed only an inch from Preston’s face. 

“That’s when my childhood ended,” Preston told the audience. “I stopped being a little girl and became a hunted animal.”

Her mother was arrested and tortured, and, said Preston, “She never laughed again.” Near the end of the war, the Russians routed the Nazis from Hungary, but life was still difficult under Soviet rule. And once the war ended, Preston and her mother found out, in heartbreaking fashion, that her father had died in the Auschwitz concentration camp, having been tortured and beaten for stealing a piece of bread. 

In later Q&A sessions with Middle School and Upper School students, Preston talked about her postwar life and her multiple careers as a fashion model, designer, EMT, and head of a theater troupe. She raised four sons and has four grandchildren. Each child and grandchild, she said, was a reaffirmation of overcoming Hitler’s evil. “That peasant girl saved not just me, but generations that came after me,” she noted. With satisfaction, she added that she is still alive, while the Nazi leader is long dead. 

She came to her current career, speaking and writing about the Holocaust, after one of her granddaughters told her that the history was not being taught in school. Preston spoke at the school and discovered her true métier. She has also penned a YA graphic novel about her experiences, called Hidden, which she says is her proudest accomplishment and which was distributed to Grade 8 students prior to Preston’s visit. At the Q&A session, one student asked how Preston had let go of her anger and hate after the war. She shared a story about an encounter with an old man who chided her for crying after a bullying incident. “If you cry, they win,” he told her. “If you love them, they get upset. Hate is a burden that does more harm to you than to them.”

Preston has not only let go of her hatred—she has also embraced hope. At the end of Monday’s presentation, she left students with a resonant message: “You have access to the entire world,” she said, holding up her smartphone. “You care about climate change. You want to fight racism. Please don’t believe the world is going down the tubes. This generation can save the world, and I’m sure you will.” 

Watch a video of the assembly.