{"id":27691,"date":"2018-02-02T03:56:34","date_gmt":"2018-02-02T11:56:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/?p=27691"},"modified":"2018-02-01T10:11:41","modified_gmt":"2018-02-01T18:11:41","slug":"survivor-shares-story","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/2018\/02\/02\/survivor-shares-story\/","title":{"rendered":"Survivor shares story"},"content":{"rendered":"

Holocaust survivor David Ehrlich speaks on Jan. 25. (photo by Pat Johnson)<\/em><\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

David Ehrlich grew up in a small city in Hungary, sleeping in the kitchen of the family\u2019s three-room house \u2013 \u201cnot three bedrooms, God forbid, three rooms\u201d \u2013 and it was through the kitchen curtains early one morning that he saw three bayonets before he heard a knock at the door.<\/p>\n

\u201cI opened the door, they came into the kitchen and they said to me in German \u2013 there were two Hungarian gendarmes and one German soldier or officer or whoever he was \u2013 \u2018I want you to bring in the family into the kitchen.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

Young David gathered his parents, sister, three brothers and grandmother and they assembled in the kitchen, where they were told to be on the street in 30 minutes to prepare for deportation to a work camp.<\/p>\n

Ehrlich shared his story Jan. 25 at a commemoration marking International Holocaust Remembrance Day (which was Jan. 27). The afternoon event, which took place at the University of British Columbia, was presented by the Vancouver Holocaust Education Centre, Hillel BC, the department of Central, Eastern and Northern European studies at UBC (CENES) and the Centre for Israel and Jewish Affairs, with support from the Akselrod family in memory of Ben Akselrod.<\/p>\n

After two weeks in a makeshift ghetto on a local farm, the 7,000 Jews were forced onto trains, said Ehrlich. Seventy people were pushed into each car.<\/p>\n

\u201cThese were not cattle cars,\u201d he clarified. \u201cI wish they had been cattle cars because [cattle cars] are ventilated.\u201d There was one little hole at the top of the car, covered with barbed wire, and a child would occasionally be lifted up to look out to see if the signs outside were in Hungarian, German or Polish.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, soon enough, the train stopped,\u201d he said. \u201cThey opened up the door \u2026 and there were some signs and some smells and some visions that I\u2019ll never forget as long as I live. The place had electric lights \u2026 barbed wire all over in all directions.<\/p>\n

\u201cLittle people \u2013 I thought they were little, but they were prisoners \u2013 came up to the train and said leave everything there, stand in line, five abreast. And we did that and walked over to this man with a stick in his hand and he was doing the selection. Who is going to live, who is going to die.\u2026 They played God. About 10 minutes or so later, we were separated from our family.\u201d<\/p>\n

While he was receiving his uniform, Ehrlich got his first lesson in what this place \u2013 Auschwitz \u2013 was all about.<\/p>\n

\u201cDid you say goodbye to your family?\u201d the man asked Ehrlich.<\/p>\n

\u201cI said, why should I? I\u2019m going to see them probably this afternoon. He said, while you were taking a shower, your family was gassed and, while we talk here, their bodies are probably being burned in the crematorium.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ehrlich\u2019s brothers were almost immediately sent on to Melk, a sub-camp of Mauthausen, in Austria.<\/p>\n

Because Hungarian Jews were among the last to be deported to the camps, the Soviet army was already advancing from the east by the time Ehrlich arrived at Auschwitz and the prisoners were sent on a death march westward. He, too, ended up in Melk and found someone from his hometown who knew the fate of his brothers. They had been sent to the hospital a few days earlier. Ehrlich knew that the hospital was a farce and that being sent there meant certain death.<\/p>\n

\u201cThat was probably my lowest point in the whole deal because I always felt that I\u2019d meet up with my brothers someplace,\u201d he said. \u201cI did, only a week too late.\u201d<\/p>\n

As the Russians kept on moving westward, the Nazis marched Ehrlich and the others further, this time to Ebensee, Austria.<\/p>\n

\u201cOne day \u2013 it was a nice sunny day \u2013 we went outside and the loudspeaker came on and the president of the camp said, I\u2019ve got good news for you. I have received orders from the Reich that we are to take you into the mine and blow it up with you in it. But I\u2019m not going to do that \u2013 that\u2019s the good news. For the first time since I\u2019m in the services of the Third Reich, I\u2019m going to disobey this order.\u201d<\/p>\n

He told the prisoners that they were free. The next day, they heard tanks on the cobblestone streets.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd a guy that was probably 20 years old \u2013 like a kid, he looked like me \u2013 got out of the manhole and said to us in Yiddish, \u2018Ich bin ein Amerikaner Jude<\/em>,\u2019 \u2018I am an American Jew.\u2019\u201d<\/p>\n

After liquids, then vitamins, eventually solids, Ehrlich regained some of his health. After two months, he still weighed less than 100 pounds, but he was ready to go home.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut going home for Holocaust survivors, whether it was to France or to Germany or to Poland, it was the same thing,\u201d said Ehrlich. \u201cCanadian soldiers, American soldiers came back from the war, they came back to their community, to their parents and to their country. We went back and there was nobody there. My sister [who had been liberated in Lithuania] was there but we lost everybody else.\u201d<\/p>\n

Ehrlich wasn\u2019t going to stay behind the Iron Curtain. He and a friend wanted to see Paris, planning eventually to head for pre-state Israel.<\/p>\n

\u201cBut, while we were waiting in Paris, there were rumours that Canada was looking for orphans to go to Canada,\u201d he said. \u201cI went to work as soon as I came to Canada. I was going on 19. I went to work and I\u2019ve been paying taxes ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n

The story has a good ending, Ehrlich told his audience.<\/p>\n

\u201cI married a wonderful girl \u2013 she\u2019s right here, the little grey-haired girl \u2013 65 years ago and we\u2019re still together and we brought up three wonderful sons.\u201d<\/p>\n

Rabbi Philip Bregman told the survivors: \u201cWe are tremendously aware of how precious you people are who lit these candles and came in today as personal witness.\u201d<\/p>\n

The commemoration also featured Prof. Uma Kumar, of CENES, who said the Holocaust is a contemporary issue because antisemitism is a contemporary issue. \u201cFor this reason,\u201d she said, \u201cit is everyone\u2019s duty to reflect on what happened.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Holocaust survivor David Ehrlich speaks on Jan. 25. (photo by Pat Johnson) David Ehrlich grew up in a small city in Hungary, sleeping in the kitchen of the family\u2019s three-room house \u2013 \u201cnot three bedrooms, God forbid, three rooms\u201d \u2013 and it was through the kitchen curtains early one morning that he saw three bayonets […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":27692,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[7787,7786,7633,1347,53,5768,3556,2364],"class_list":["post-27691","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-local","tag-akselrod","tag-cenes","tag-david-ehrlich","tag-hillel-bc","tag-holocaust","tag-survivor","tag-ubc","tag-vhec"],"blocksy_meta":{"styles_descriptor":{"styles":{"desktop":"","tablet":"","mobile":""},"google_fonts":[],"version":8}},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27691","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=27691"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27691\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/27692"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=27691"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=27691"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.jewishindependent.ca\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=27691"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}