Holocaust Survivors Arnold Newfield, Marion Blumenthal Lazan Speak At Lindenhurst High

LINDENHURST, NY — Lindenhurst High School welcomed two Holocaust survivors on Feb. 27 for a powerful day of testimony and discussion, offering students the rare opportunity to hear firsthand accounts of survival, loss, and resilience during one of history’s darkest chapters.

Arnold Newfield, 84, shared his family’s traumatic journey of survival. Born in 1942 at the Westerbork transit camp in Holland, Newfield was just 3 years old when he was separated from his father, who was sent to Buchenwald. Newfield, along with his mother and two brothers, was deported to the Ravensbrück concentration camp.

Despite brutal camp conditions, Newfield said his mother managed to keep her children alive, aided at times by fellow prisoners — and even, on occasion, by certain SS officers. After liberation by British troops, the family reunited in Holland and later immigrated to the United States in 1947, settling on Manhattan’s Lower East Side.

Newfield addressed roughly half of the student body during a morning assembly before participating in a smaller group session, where students had the opportunity to ask questions and engage in deeper conversation about his experiences.

Later that morning, Marion Blumenthal Lazan, 91, author of the memoir Four Perfect Pebbles, spoke to a larger group of students. Lazan recounted her family’s six-and-a-half years under Nazi rule, beginning with their escape from Germany after Kristallnacht in 1938. After becoming trapped in Holland following the German invasion, her family was eventually imprisoned at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp, where Anne Frank also perished.

Lazan described the daily struggle to survive in the camp, where starvation, fear, and uncertainty defined childhood. She and her family were ultimately liberated by Soviet troops while being transported by train to an extermination camp. The family later emigrated to the United States. Lazan has been sharing her story publicly since 1979, dedicating decades to Holocaust education.

As the generation of Holocaust survivors continues to dwindle, Newfield and Lazan provided students with an increasingly rare opportunity to learn directly from witnesses to history — ensuring that the lessons of the Holocaust endure for future generations.