Holocaust survivor Ella Mandel did not soften her words as she spoke to a group of Defense Department middle school students thousands of miles away.

Mandel, via a video call Thursday, described in stark terms what life was like inside Nazi concentration camps for about 30 eighth-graders at Misawa Air Base in northeastern Japan.

For many of the Edgren Middle High School students, it was the moment the Holocaust shifted from a subject studied in textbooks to something deeply real.

Asked what housing and food were like in the camps, Mandel answered bluntly.

“Starving. Hungry. Bitter. Fighting. That’s how the food was,” she said. “If you got food, you were lucky. If you didn’t get it, you died. That’s how the food was.”

Her tone remained steady as she recounted starvation, loss and survival.

“My childhood was very short,” she said. “Because by 13, I was in a concentration camp.”

Mandel, 99, grew up in Poland before the Nazi occupation and described how quickly life changed for Jewish families. She was later sent to Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen, where she lost most of her family and survived largely on her own. She now lives in California.

The session was part of a two-day program organized by Edgren language arts teachers Jami LeFebre and Betsy Johnson, who arranged for Holocaust survivors to speak virtually with students. The school’s booster club funded the program, and each speaker — both affiliated with the Museum of Tolerance in Los Angeles — received a $250 stipend.

Earlier in the week, seventh-graders heard from another survivor, Eva Brettler, 89, who endured Ravensbruck and Bergen-Belsen. She also lives in California.

“It was pretty inspiring to hear Eva Brettler’s story,” student Melody Garcia said afterward. “It was really cool to learn about a child who had to go through the Holocaust.”

Students spent weeks preparing for the sessions, reading works such as “Refugee” by Alan Gratz and “The Diary of a Young Girl” by Anne Frank to build historical context. Frank and her older sister, Margot, died at Bergen-Belsen.

Another student, Aiden Yingling, said the experience showed how people — even strangers — helped each other survive unimaginable conditions.

“I was very shocked to hear about everything [Brettler] had gone through,” he said. “But she kept moving forward even through it all.”

During Mandel’s talk, she reflected on how abruptly life changed in the concentration camps.

“Life was finished for our people — for Jewish people, our lives were finished in Poland,” she said. Millions of Jewish people were killed during the Holocaust “because Hitler made sure that we died.”

LeFebre said the goal was to leave a lasting impression, as opportunities to hear from survivors diminish.

“Forgetting our history is a dangerous concept. … We have to keep reminding ourselves why things happened the way they did, both good and bad,” she said.

As her session ended, Mandel greeted each student individually and offered a final message.

“Remember,” she said. “I finish always my speaking by telling everybody to remember.”