Noah DeBonis, a junior at Misawa Air Base's Edgren High School, was recently named one of 10 finalists in the Holocaust Remembrance Project national essay contest, a first for a Department of Defense Dependents School student. (Stars and Stripes photo)
MISAWA AIR BASE, Japan — When a friend asks Noah DeBonis, “Is it true, you don’t eat pork?” or “Can Jews see better in the dark?” he doesn’t get mad.
And despite being one of Edgren High School’s few Jewish students, he certainly doesn’t feel different.
By simply answering the questions, DeBonis, 17, says he can educate others and help dispel Jewish stereotypes.
With a family tree that fell victim to one of the most organized and vicious acts of human extermination in history, it’s a responsibility he takes seriously.
DeBonis’ great grandparents and grandparents narrowly escaped the Holocaust on a boat from Poland eight days before Germany invaded in 1939. A great uncle eluded Nazi guards and certain death by hiding inside a latrine in a German concentration camp. DeBonis’ middle name of David honors his grandmother’s cousin and best friend in Poland, who died in a concentration camp.
“Remembering is also education,” DeBonis said. “If you learn about the Holocaust … it’s not about religion, it’s about people. I’m not different from anyone else.”
Last year, DeBonis put his thoughts about his family, his heritage, and the importance of remembering the past to paper. His words were noticed: The Edgren junior was recently named one of the 10 first-place winners in the Holocaust Remembrance Project national essay contest, a first for a Department of Defense Dependents School student.
Now in its 11th year, the program is designed to serve as a living memorial to the millions of innocent victims of the Holocaust, according to its Web site.
The 10 first-place winners earn an all-expense paid trip to Washington, D.C., from July 24-29 to visit the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum and other historic sites with teachers and Holocaust survivors. Each winning essayist also receives a scholarship ranging from $1,000 to $5,000, to be announced during the trip.
The relatives who witnessed the Holocaust are on DeBonis’ father’s side. Steven DeBonis teaches English as a second language in Japanese schools. The teen’s mother, Laurie Kuntz, is a language arts teacher at Edgren.
“He competed against 3,000 people, so I think its quite a notable achievement,” the elder DeBonis said of his son.
In less than 1,200 words, DeBonis had to analyze why it’s important that the remembrance, history and lessons of the Holocaust be passed to a new generation.
“The question I asked is ‘Is remembrance futile?’” DeBonis said. The Holocaust wasn’t an isolated incident in history, he said, pointing to the Cambodian Khmer Rouge atrocities in the 1970s and the current genocide in Darfur, Sudan, as two examples.
In fact, DeBonis was born in a refugee camp in the Philippines, where his parents educated Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians bound for America after the Vietnam War.
But he concluded in his essay that remembrance is indeed vital, and “the obligation to remember no longer rests on the shoulders of the survivors.”
“If you remember, then hopefully when you see the beginning of hatred, you can say, ‘This is what caused the Holocaust’ … and put an end to it before it becomes unstoppable,” he said.
In Washington, D.C., he hopes to ask some of the Holocaust survivors he’ll meet how they persevered.
“Through it all, for them to have kept a clear mind … to stay alive through the ordeal, I would not be able to do that. I would be broken.”
