New Albany Middle School was honored to welcome Don Jakeway, a member of the Army’s 82nd Airborne Division, and Bert Jakobs, a Holocaust survivor, on Thursday, February 2.
Don and Bert met for the first time just one day before their visit to the New Albany school. When they met with students and staff, they shared how Don aided Bert’s family survival and the impact it made on each of their lives.
On September 17, 1944, Don and his fellow paratroopers parachuted into the town of Beek, Holland with a mission to secure the bridges in town. They encountered heavy gunfire for four days, and then on September 21, with no German Nazi soldiers in sight, Don heard an SOS call coming from the house whose garden was their battleground. This SOS call was from a fourteen year-old German Jew named Edith Jakobs, sister of Bert Jacobs. Edith, and her family of five, had been hiding in this house for twenty-five months. Don and his infantry successfully liberated this family after months of fear. The youngest member of this family was Bert Jakobs, then ten. Bert has always known that Don and his infantry were responsible for liberating his family, but they had never met… until now!
“Having these men visit our campus, not only to tell their stories, but to share their insights on WWII, prejudice, discrimination, and culture is an opportunity our children will not have in five to ten years as these “historians” are well in their 70s, 80s and 90s,” said Social Studies Teacher Michele Oldenquist.
“Throughout New Albany’s social studies curriculum, we emphasize the importance of learning from the past, so that we do not allow history’s mistakes to be repeated,” Ms. Oldenquist continues. “As educators, we believe that having first-hand accounts of these events will make history come alive and provide students with a powerful example of how humans persevere despite the greatest of odds.”
