Hadley Mason

9/9/15
University Writing 2

After watching this video documenting the struggle that Reva Kilbort endured during the
Holocaust, I found that what I enjoyed the most about the video was how easy it seemed for her
to talk about what she had experience. The pride she felt when she told the interviewer that she
was born in Warsaw, Poland, and how her favorite time of the year was and still is Passover. All
though many were crucified and pulverized for practicing their heritage and religion, she is
proud to be Jewish.
The way Reva described what she had endured was so vivid one would have thought she
had experienced it all yesterday. I admired how she answered every question that the interviewer
presented with acceptance. It was clear that she had indeed experience horrors that others could
not possibly imagine but was able to talk about those times with such grace and poise.
I also admired the way she spoke of her family. How even though they didnt have a lot
of money, she still led a normal life. As well as even though she had lost a younger sister in 1938
making Reva the youngest out of her siblings, she was able to recollect the love and affection her
family had all felt for one another. Off course love is never easily forgotten.
It truly amazed me when Reva talked of how her older sisters would endanger their lives
to smuggle food from the Germans so that their family could survive. Speaking so highly of her
sisters education, explaining that because they spoke fluent Polish the German Nazis never
suspected a thing. But that in order to survive in the Ghettos making that sacrifice to obtain food
was the only way to survive.
The more the interviewer asked of Revas past the more she opened up about how she
would keep her spirits up when she and her sisters would sing we will survive we have to
survive. She spoke of how during the Holocaust she was always kept very close to her mother

Hadley Mason
9/9/15
University Writing 2

because she was the youngest out of all of her siblings. She remembered running from the bombs
as they were dropped on building after building, and how her mother pulled her by the wrist as
they ran from the spreading fire.
Watching this interview I learned a lot about how life changing and difficult this time was
for Reva and her family. This interview shed a lot of light on just how horrifying this time was
very those who actually experienced the horrors that textbooks and classrooms only scratch the
surface of. Her strength and ability to describe the events that she personally witnessed is
something that I truly admired about this interview. Not everyone can talk about such dark times
as she did. But as she spoke of the role she played in the holocaust, Reva made it known to the
viewers that role she played in that event and time is something that she has accepted and will
always be a part of her. Reva Kilbort survived and her survival and will to keep going only made
her stronger.