Teacher touched by Holocaust helps educate students
Published: April 4, 2006
Freddie Mularsky knows about the Holocaust personally — his father, Getzel Mularsky, almost died in it.
“He was 13, 14, 15 years old. It was a miracle he survived,” the Tavares Middle School teacher said of his father. “My dad told me once in his life what he went through. He told me about the night the Nazis came and got him.
“I used to ask him to come to the school and tell his story to the kids, but he just couldn’t do it, the memories were so bad.”
Getzel Mularsky was his family’s only survivor. His mother, father and sister were among the 6 million Jews who died in Nazi concentration camps during World War II.
He helped start Lake County’s first synagogue, Congregation Beth Shalom, and was its only rabbi for more than 50 years. He was still serving as rabbi when he died at age 78 in December 2004.
As a tribute to him, the Mularsky family has given $10,000 to the nonprofit Holocaust Memorial Resource and Education Center in Maitland.
Center officials said the money will go into a fund that pays for continuing to educate people about the Holocaust.
The center provides historical exhibits, photos and educational films.
As part of the social-studies lesson on the Holocaust, Mularsky takes his students and school staff every year to the center at 851 N. Maitland Ave.
Assistant Principal Letizia Haugabrook-Graham was among those at the two-hour presentation March 21.
“It was an eye-opening experience,” she said. “I can’t imagine people being treated that way. Children screaming for their mothers, putting them in gas chambers, slamming babies against walls . . .
“All those people lost their lives because of hatred and racism.”
She said the presentation was emotional. “I had to get up and walk out once just to get myself together. It was a good experience for me. It was unbelievable. This is something I would love to share with my family. I would definitely like to take my family members back there.”
One of Mularsky’s eighth-grade students, Daniel Staehler, said the center presentation revealed interesting information about Adolf Hitler.
“Twins [Jewish twins] were treated like lab rats. They used them for experiments,” Daniel said.
Eighth-grader Sean Dwyer said: “I don’t know how so many people could be so mean to other people.”
Mularsky, 46, has been teaching social studies at Tavares Middle for five years and in Lake County Schools for 25.
He has taken middle- and high-school students on trips to the center for eight years.
“You get a lot more if you visit the center because of the pictures and the artifacts,” Mularsky said. “And they showed the kids an outstanding video. The kids get a lot out of it. This field trip was so educational.”
In addition to the field trip, Mularsky tells students about his father.
“I tell my kids my dad’s story of surviving for the three years, but I don’t go into the graphics of what my dad told me,” he said.
In his early teens, Getzel Mularsky survived by doing hard labor for the Nazis.
During those years he ate one piece of dried bread per day, his son said.
“He buried dead bodies. He saw horrific things. One of his jobs was to shine the boots of German officers. They would hit him, spit on him, curse him. . . . He did what he was told to do, so he could survive,” Mularsky said.
Haugabrook-Graham said she appreciates that the center provides the history and details of the Holocaust.
The “field trip was a reality check for me,” she said. “I needed that. Knowledge is power, and you need to know.”
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