“She survived hell at 19. Then she spent 80 years making sure children could learn from it without breaking.”
Batsheva Dagan asked a question most of us never consider: How do you teach children about humanity’s darkest chapter without crushing their spirit?
Born Izabella Rubinstein in 1925 in Łódź, Poland, she grew up surrounded by warmth, laughter, and family traditions. That world shattered when she was just 14 years old.
The Nazis invaded. Her family was forced into the Radom ghetto—a place where hunger replaced joy and fear replaced safety.
At 17, she arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau with her family. Within hours, her parents and siblings were murdered. She was selected for forced labor and endured two years of unimaginable horror before liberation in 1945.
She was 19. Almost everyone she loved was gone.
Most survivors carried their trauma in silence. Batsheva chose a different path.
She moved to Israel, became a teacher and psychologist, and devoted her life to answering that impossible question: How do you help children understand genocide without traumatizing them?
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