JOSH MELTZER | The Roanoke Times

Students and guests of a Holocaust class at Ferrum College gather around Nathan Kranowski as he displays photographs Tuesday.

JOSH MELTZER | The Roanoke Times

Nathan Kranowski, who survived the Nazis in France, talks to a Ferrum College class, showing pictures of his parents who were executed because they were Jewish.

JOSH MELTZER | The Roanoke Times

Nathan Kranowski, who was one of the hidden Jewish children in France during the Holocaust, survived after his parents were arrested and killed by the Nazis.

JOSH MELTZER | The Roanoke Times

Marcia Horn, who teaches the Holocaust course at Ferrum, holds up a photo of her mother and a man who Horn's grandmother saved during World War II.

FERRUM -- On a small, quaint campus tucked into the Blue Ridge Mountains there's a class being taught about a big, world-changing event -- the Holocaust. And the class includes guest appearances by survivors.

This week's speaker, in Room 107 of Ferrum College's Britt Hall, was Nathan Kranowski. As a child in World War II-torn France, he was hidden away during his first years of life.

At 25, years after he was brought to the United States, he received news in the mail that when he was 3 years old, his parents had been confined in concentration camps and later executed.

"I was emotionally shocked," said Kranowski, 70, with an accent that mixes his French heritage and New York upbringing. Ferrum students heard Kranowski's story Tuesday. Nearly every week a different speaker tells his or her experience to the 21 students in the class.

"The window of having Holocaust survivors with us is closing," said Marcia Horn, the Ferrum instructor who started the class. "We have to take advantage of their knowledge while they are here with us. Time is the enemy."

Horn said she became interested in the Holocaust in 1995 right before taking a yearlong sabbatical from teaching.

"Everything was pushing me toward the Holocaust even though my experience is in Shakespeare," said Horn, adding that she had been active in multicultural affairs at the college.

But the thought for a class came when she had a chance to hear a speech from a Holocaust survivor at Radford University.

"I said to another faculty member, 'You know, we don't have anything like this at Ferrum College,' " she said.

Horn then began the process of putting the class together for a college with little to no Jewish student population.

"We're very unlikely to have this course here," said Horn, adding that the class, which is now in its 10th year of being taught, is an elective for students.

"We're like a Cinderella story."

In addition to midterms and final exams, which Horn labeled as very difficult, students keep journals and travel to Washington, D.C., every February to visit the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum.

"We get debriefed by the staff there and plant flowers in the memorial garden," said Horn, adding the trip is funded by the Roanoke Jewish Community Council. "It really is a powerful experience."

Ten different faculty members teach the course throughout the semester and concentrate on every aspect of the Holocaust from religion and politics to psychological brainwashing techniques and even art during that time.

Local artist Nell Fredericksen said she was asked to teach the art portion of the class nearly three years ago and became fascinated by the time period.

"The first year I taught the class, I also took the class," Fredericksen said. "My father was a pilot during World War II, but he never talked about it."

After visiting the Holocaust museum with the class, Fredericksen decided to let students create tiles that reflect their thoughts on the period and hang them in Roberts Hall, a building on the Ferrum campus.

One tile from last year read, "Not to transit an experience is to betray it."

"This has such an emotional and strong impact, and it changes you," Fredericksen said. "It's important that all of these lessons are on the record."

Horn said it is normal to see instructors from other disciplines come and audit the course.

"You can learn so much from watching other people teach," Horn said. "Every year the instructors bring something new to the course."

Freshman Amber Vogelgesang said she was excited to take the course when she first learned it was being offered.

"I got excited about the Holocaust when I visited the museum in D.C. in high school," Vogelgesang said. "You can empathize to it. You get a lot of the Jewish perspective that you wouldn't normally get."

The course is free for senior citizens over 65, a fact that prompted Marion Higgins to take the class.

"I don't have to take any of the tests, and I can get all of the books from the library," said Higgins, adding that she found out about the class during a book club meeting. "It's good to know that these classes are available for you after retirement."

Horn said the class, which is normally only offered during the spring semester, hopes to have a fall evening course beginning next year.

Vogelgesang said she hopes the course will expand to include others who were disenfranchised during the Holocaust such as gays, Gypsies and blacks.

"Those are the stories that we want to hear about," Vogelgesang said. "It was a lot more than just the Jews."

But for Kranowski those years of German occupancy in his native country symbolize his Jewish heritage.

While in France, Kranowski said he never went to synagogue, and even when he first came to the United States, he barely attended.

After finding out the truth of his secret past, Kranowski said he faithfully attends synagogue.

"Mostly to honor my parents who died only because they were Jews."