Invaluable asset

For Holocaust survivors such as Las Vegas resident Stephen Nasser, time is as priceless as life itself.

Mr. Nasser was just 13 when Nazis rounded up his family and sent them all to Auschwitz. He was the only one of 21 to make it out alive.

Today Mr. Nasser speaks to what likely will be the last generation of children who’ll have the opportunity to hear the horrors of the Holocaust from the mouths of those who lived it. When the aging Mr. Nasser and his peers are gone, future students will have to rely on museums, books and recorded testimonials — decidedly less-personal mediums.

"We’re losing our primary sources to time," Victoria Gildner, an art teacher at Mack Middle School, told View News writer Jeff Mosier when Mr. Nasser spoke at the Northwest Career and Technical Academy for the Holocaust Education Conference. "It’s a precious resource that we need to expose as many kids to as possible."

On March 23, Mr. Nasser gave his 700th Holocaust lecture at Las Vegas High School, coinciding with the opening of the school’s Holocaust museum. He pulls no punches in describing his brutal experiences inside the concentration camp. He documented those terrors in a diary written on cement bag paper, which he published in 2003 as "My Brother’s Voice."

Mr. Nasser shows no signs of slowing down, as evidenced by the schedule that’s posted on his website, http://mybrothersvoice.com. He spoke at four local schools this week alone.

People such as Mr. Nasser are an invaluable asset to this community. The more young people he reaches, the better they’ll understand the message on a T-shirt given to him by students from Faiss Middle School: "Never again."