Staff photo / R. Michael Semple .... Erika T. Gold, left, with her daughter Marilyn Zaas, speaks to 1,000 students at Stambaugh Auditorium in Youngstown on Thursday.

YOUNGSTOWN — Most people’s housekeepers are hired to perform duties such as mopping floors, dusting furniture, changing bed linens and vacuuming the carpeting, but Erika T. Gold’s family’s domestic worker’s primary duty was far more consequential.

“She let us in because we had no place to go. No one knew we were there, and we could have been killed every day,” said Gold, 93, of Cleveland.

In December 1944, the Nazis rounded up and shipped in a fleet of trucks about 300 Hungarian Jewish women and children from a uniform factory where they had been hiding. At one point, the truck Gold and her mother were in stopped at a marketplace, at which time the two of them jumped then ran before ending up at the home of their former housekeeper, Gold recalled during a presentation she delivered to an estimated 1,000 middle and high school students Thursday morning at Stambaugh Auditorium.

The students in grades 7 to 12 represented 12 schools in Mahoning, Trumbull and Columbiana counties as well as western Pennsylvania.

Hosting the one-hour presentation in which Gold shared her story of being a Holocaust survivor was the Jewish Community Relations Council of the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation. Also on stage with Gold was her daughter, Marilyn Zaas of Cleveland.

Gold, originally from Budapest, Hungary, was born five months before Adolph Hitler ascended to power in January 1933. Soon after, Jews were forbidden from attending universities, many lost their jobs and others had their business boycotted, she noted, adding that the Nazis also made a practice of burning many books by Jewish authors.

After having annexed Austria in March 1938, the German military invaded and occupied Hungary on March 19, 1944, in a move code-named Operation Margarethe, to secure Hungary as an ally and prevent that country from defecting to the Allies. Soon after, Germany began a wide-scale deportation of Hungarian Jews to the German concentration camps.

Many of the Jews were taken to the infamous Auschwitz concentration and extermination camp in cattle cars. There were 80 to 120 per car with no seats and extremely poor ventilation. Once there, Josef Mengele, a Nazi German officer and physician often known as the “Angel of death,” was in charge mainly of separating the prisoners, Gold explained.

“Hundreds of thousands of people were just gone,” she said.

Among those who were gassed then cremated was her maternal grandfather, Gold said, adding that her father was sent to a forced labor camp after having been made to close a store he ran.

In her presentation, Gold alluded to the Kristallnacht, also known as the “Night of Broken Glass,” that occurred Nov. 9 and 10, 1938, in which Nazis and German civilians tossed stones at and broke windows of Jewish homes, synagogues and businesses throughout the country. In addition, she told the young audience about the “Final Solution,” the code name for a policy of mass murder in which Nazi Germany planned to commit genocide against European Jews.

Even after Hitler invaded her native country, many Hungarians remained optimistic — in part because of a high level of anti-Semitism there — that everything would work out in the end. It wasn’t until later that Gold learned about the death camps, she told the students and their teachers.

At one point while in hiding — and during a time when Jews were allowed to buy little more than fresh fruits and vegetables and no meat — Gold sneaked into a nearby bakery and bought an ice cream cone, a simple treat that could have cost the young girl her life. She also removed a yellow star she had to wear that identified her as a Jew.

“I could have been shot on the spot,” Gold said, adding that she never repeated the move.

Shortly before the Soviet Union liberated Hungary, a slow process that began with the Budapest Offensive in October 1944, and after the Nazis let him go, Gold’s father found and was reunited with the family, and they returned to their original apartment, which looked largely the same as when they were forced out. On Feb. 13, 1945, Budapest fell to the Soviets, which ended the fighting in Hungary.

The apartment, however, lacked running water, electricity, food and gas, “but we were free,” Gold told her rapt audience.

After World War II, Cuba was selling visas, so Gold and the family lived there a few years before coming to the U.S. in 1950. Over the years, she graduated as a medical technologist, raised a family and retired in 1997.

Gold expressed concern for this generation, which, she feels, is experiencing much of the same anti-Semitism and hate put forth by the media and today’s political climate that fueled many of the atrocities of 85 years ago. Gold also fails to understand why some people continue to denigrate others because of their skin color and beliefs.

She also proffered what she feels are some things today’s young people can do to counter such societal conditions.

“Make sure you vote for a decent individual. People died for the privilege of voting. You can’t complain if you don’t vote,” Gold said, adding, “Take advantage of your education. Study, study, study.”

Gold’s story of tragedy and triumph resonated with the students, including Peyton Evans, 15, a Newton Falls High School sophomore who praised Gold for speaking unscripted and from the heart, as well as for her bravery.

Peyton said her hope is that what Gold shared will have sustaining power to help others see that racism and anti-Semitism are both wrong and unjustifiable.

“We’re all just people; let people live their lives,” she said, adding, “We’re all human beings, regardless of our stations. No one should be seen as more than another.”

It’s also vital for others to remember and preserve the stories of people such as Gold so that the horrific mistakes of the Nazi era are never repeated, Peyton said.

“I hope (the students) will learn about the Holocaust and the stories, and the survivors’ names over the perpetrators’ names,” said Melissa Bateman, the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation’s communications and engagement director.

Perhaps the greatest takeaway Bateman hopes the young people will adopt and implement after having heard Gold’s plight would be to stand up to, and speak against, any injustices they may witness, she added.

Education, as well as developing a greater empathy toward, and understanding of, others are two pivotal ways to continue fighting anti-Semitism, Bateman said, adding that “it’s not always about us.”

The Pepper Pike-based Kol Israel Foundation’s Face to Face program was responsible for bringing Gold to Youngstown.