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Rabbis, Friends, Ladies and Gentlemen:
I am honored to be with you this evening.
April 11th was the 64th anniversary of the liberation of Buchenwald. I am a survivor of that infamous concentration camp.
I celebrate the occasion as my birthday, that day I was reborn again. When the Americans liberated the camp, they were surprised to find youngsters like myself. They wanted to know ... who are these kids? Where do they come from? What are their nationality ... Why are they here?
They proceeded to make a list of our names and when my turn came and I was asked my name. I blurted out 117098, the number given to me. My name as a human was erased. I was surprised that they wanted my name not my number.
My eyes have seen unspeakable horrors. I am a witness to the ultimate evil. I am a witness to man’s inhumanity to other human beings.
My mother, father and four older brothers were murdered by the Nazis ... uncles, aunts, cousins, friends I went to school with.
I to this day cannot grasp how I managed to go through hell and survive. The promise of being reunited with my family, all my loved ones, was the strong motivator for not giving up, for not losing it and falling into despair.
Having gone through hell and the dehumanizing process that ensued. The concentration camp experience was impossible to shake. During the Holocaust there was no place for thought or feelings. We existed for the moment and [used] every effort to survive.
After having come out of the abyss, I remember thinking: What now? I must go home. My family is waiting for me.
Then the questions began: Where are our loved ones? What happened to them? So much devastation. How to cope? So many losses. Including our humanity. We became angry and outraged.
How to have normal feeling and emotions again? How to cry and laugh and how do we learn to love again? All of it had to be relearned.
It was not easy to achieve these very necessary simple tasks. The resiliency of the human spirit came to the rescue. It was the anticipation of being reunited with my family, that glimpse of heaven, kept hope alive.
Before the war, I lived with my family in Skarzysko, Poland. Being the youngest of five brothers and one sister, life was absolutely wonderful. I was spoiled and very much loved.
I often think of the short time I had with my entire family at home. Although the years were few, the impressions on my life have been profound and everlasting. I am so fortunate to have those cherished memories. Those wonderful memories of home with my family were instrumental in my survival. The thought of being reunited, of going home to all my loved ones, gave me the strength to overcome enormous obstacles and helped me to focus on one thing only – survival. No matter what. To this day, when I think of home with my family, it gives me a warm feeling.
The joys of Friday nights; the comings and goings of my four older brothers and my sister Leah ... Their aspirations and hopes for the future ... It was exciting and wonderful. The marvelous feeling of warmth, security and joy has stayed with me throughout the years. In fact it sustained me during those horrific tortured years in the camps. My mother’s constant devotion and love overflowing for all us kids. Truly a Yiddish mamma. How I’ve missed her over the years.
My oldest brother Haim had just come back for military service, he was an officer in the Polish army. He was my James Bond. He was married to a beautiful girl by the name of Golda. Before they married, I had a crush on Golda. She was gorgeous. She had a ringlet on the forehead. I was eight years old and I was in love with her. I gave her up when she became engaged to my brother Haim.
Their first born was a beautiful boy named Nathan. I was so proud to be an uncle. So you see I was compensated for giving up on Golda. Nathan was not yet three years old the last time I saw him. Golda was young and beautiful and could have easily gone to work in the ammunition factory, but she would have had to give up her little Nathan. She refused to be separated from her little boy and instead was sent to the Treblinka gas chambers with him. So many other young Jewish mothers did the same.
When I think back to before the war, nothing was ever going to change this feeling of contentment and security. I was wrong. When fears began to be expressed all around me about the impending war, I did not worry. I felt completely protected by the love and strength of my family. My father believed in a civilized world, especially Germany. After all, he used to say to our worried friends and neighbors, "Have they not produced great composers, writers, on and on. And Germany’s Jews were highly regarded with considerable influence and well-integrated into society. 1939 ... the war breaks out ... everything changed drastically.
After the Skarzysko ghetto was liquidated, I was interned in the ammunition factory with my dad and two brothers. I cannot help remembering the anguish in my father’s eyes as we both witnessed the brutal murder of my brother Abram, who was three years older. I lost all four brothers, but my brother Abram is particularly painful because I was there. I witnessed it . He contracted typhoid fever and could no longer work. If you couldn’t work, you were no longer of any use to the Nazis.
When the SS guards selected him and put him on a truck, our eyes met, we looked at each other. I had an overwhelming urge to join him. I started to run towards him. I was stopped ... Never will I forget the love and tenderness I felt for my brother Abram at that moment. He waved me away. He did not want me near him. He realized, as our eyes met, that I should not be with him. Being with him meant certain death and he knew it.
I wanted to reach him regardless. I wanted to go to him, and I wanted to give him a hug! I needed to tell him that I loved him – why had I not told him that before? They would not let me. So I watched the truck leaving the compound towards the forest nearby. Never will I forget hearing the crackling sound of machine gun fire. Never will I forget the devastation in my heart as I watched in horror the truck returning empty.
Why did he die? How can I come to terms with this deed? What was his crime? He was born Jewish.
I have vivid memories of my father as being a tower of strength to all of us in the family, as well as to the whole neighborhood. Everyone used to come to our home for advice. My dad was known for his compassion and good counsel. Folks in the community used to respect my father.
During those dark years, we worked in the ammunitions factory in Skarzysko in 12-hour shifts, 7 a.m. to 7 p.m. I worked day shift and my father night shift. We only saw each other on Sundays. The only day when we did not work. I used to look forward to that day. The rest of the week we used to look for one another as we marched to and from work to the barracks and we would wave to each other.
After my brother’s death, that first Sunday, I looked at my dad and noticed a broken man, completely dejected. The change was drastic! I could not believe my eyes. His black hair suddenly turned white. I asked him, “Dad, <I>Tate<P>, what is wrong?” He did not reply. I looked up and saw a tear running down his cheek. The strength that was always there was gone. I was 11 years old and needed him. I wanted him to tell me that everything would be alright. I wanted his usual reassurance, but it wasn’t there anymore.
I became angry with him. I wanted his strength. I needed the father I knew and loved. Now that anger has come back to haunt me. I now feel that I failed my father and I am sorry for my behavior.
You see, I did not understand or appreciate his pain.
I did not know the details that I would find out many years later. When the ghetto in Skarzysko was liquidated, my mother, my father's beloved wife, Rivkalah, was sent to the gas chamber in Treblinka. He already knew it. I didn’t until much later. He kept it from me.
I only came to understand my father, long after I came to Canada, long after I myself became a parent did I understand what it must have been like for a father to witness his child’s murder.
Many of these details became known to me many years after the war. In Toronto, I met a friend of my brother Haim who survived. Then he told me how my older brother Haim died. They were organizing an escape and it failed. The entire group was shot. I did not know. I was devastated hearing it. He also told me that my father was there witnessing this horrific act. This my father also kept from me. Can you imagine that kind of horror and anguish for a parent to endure?
In the days that followed, I looked for my father going to work, so I could wave to him like I had always done, but he was not there.
I often wonder how he died? Did he run up to the electric fence like so many did when they could no longer tolerate the pain of it all? Was he simply shot when he did not walk fast enough and fell behind a way to invite a bullet, or did he die of a broken heart?
My father believed in humanity. How devastating all this must have been to him. I search for answers. I only find more questions.
How could anyone remain sane and go on functioning as a human being when humanity was destroyed in front of our eyes? Most of all, how do you come to terms with the tragic loss of our loved ones, Inzern Eltern, our fathers, mothers, brothers, and sisters. Friends we grew up with, our childhood, our innocence, everything gone. How was it all possible?
We started questioning the existence of God. How could this happen to us? And yet, in the concentration camps, I saw people around me continuing to pray to God. And we looked for him, and expected him to come to the rescue, but did not see him.
Before the war, we all came from Orthodox homes, rich in heritage and tradition, but after coming out of the terrible abyss, the darkness, we questioned angrily.
What we learned at home from our parents was not lost. The Yiddishkeit and Menschlechkeit, the sense of humanity, slowly returned to us. Our faith was shaken, yet, in spite of it all, we remained true to it.
In those dark days of the 1940s, the Nazis were relentless in the killings of Jews. Elie Wiesel said it best, “The Nazis did the killings, the Jews did the dying, and the world was oblivious and indifferent.”
The outside world, the majority of people, remained uncaring. Many others were targeted, but Jews particularly were singled out.
What happened then, long ago, in my time, wasn’t supposed to occur ever again. Yet it is happening in many parts of the world.
The Holocaust, we were told, was so unique that the lesson of tolerance and understanding for all humanity will have been learned for all time.
We, the survivors of the Holocaust, have a duty and obligation to make sure that never again is not used lightly. It must have meaning.
NEVER AGAIN ... noble, thought-provoking words, only if we act upon them. Then and only then do these words become meaningful.
The world must be reminded of its commitment to “Never again” allow such genocidal evil to prevail. And yet it is happening. Never again has become again and again.
Every human tragedy has its own unique context. Our own experience with the Holocaust has taught us that evil must be recognized and that we have a responsibility to ensure that it never happens again to anyone.
And yet, I must ask: Have we learned nothing from the past? What is the world doing about it now?
As a Jewish child before the Nazis occupied Poland, I remember a recurring theme.
My family, friends and visitors kept exchanging, in hush tones, the frightful rumors about what was happening to Jews and Jewish communities in Germany.
The refrain became “It couldn’t happen here.” Hitler was dismissed as a lunatic. The German people were too civilized to allow Nazi rule. The idea of men, women and children being killed for no reason other than their ethnicity was unthinkable and unbelievable … Not wanting to face reality … or maybe the mind was unable to deal with it.
When I lecture in schools about the Holocaust, I try to convey to students the concentration camp experience, in the hope that sharing my pain with them would help them learn the lesson of how to prevent it from happening again.
By being a witness to history, I believe that our young people are learning the lesson from us and that they themselves will also become witnesses and work diligently for a better world.
Can you imagine that today after all the undisputed evidence that exists, there are countries and leaders denying the Holocaust?
Hatred and anti-Semitism is again prevalent in many parts of the world, including here in Canada.
Words often fail me. What happened in Europe is proof beyond doubt of the brutal evil existing, even in a civilized society. It is difficult to comprehend.
Forgetting the Holocaust is every survivor’s greatest fear. And simply not an option! Remembrance of the terrible events offers an opportunity to all of us to reflect on the moral responsibilities we have as individuals.
Six million Jews were murdered, of which 1,500,000 were children. We can barely grasp and internalize the death of one only child, such as a car accident or other misfortune we read in the local papers. How can we grasp the death of millions?
Having been one of the very few lucky enough to have survived, I can tell you without a doubt what the children, still alive, in Darfur, and so many other parts in the world have on their mind. They simply want to live and have food to eat. I was in their shoes in the 1940s and I kept asking then: why do the Nazis want to kill me? What did I do? What was I guilty of? We were unable to find answers then, nor can we find answers today of why these killings of innocent children all over the globe is allowed to continue?
Albert Einstein, who was a pacifist, said: “The world is a dangerous place to live, not because of people who are evil, but because of the people who don’t do anything about it.”
We must rededicate ourselves to combat hatred, prejudice and racism.
Will the Shoah, the Holocaust, be remembered 50 years from now? As survivors, we fear that the catastrophe, unequalled in the annals of history, that has befallen the Jewish people, might not be remembered.
We just celebrated Passover. We sat at the seder table and remembered the ultimate festival of freedom. We were slaves in Egypt 2000 years ago and God, with an outstretched arm, preformed the miracle and the Jewish people were freed. I was a slave in Germany 64 years ago. So for me, however, as a survivor of Buchenwald, the Hagadah is relevant to Passover, of course, but for me it is not enough. Does the Shoah not deserve to be part of the proceeding? It is for me. After all, Six Million of our people were brutally murdered by the Nazis … men, women and children.
More than 64 years have passed since the Nazi concentration camps were liberated. The end to the nightmare of the death camps did not come soon enough.
It was too late for most of our loved ones, so many of our people. When I speak to young students at schools, they often ask me how could something so terrible have happened? Didn’t anyone protest or care, they ask. Where was the entire world?
Why? Why? So many unanswered questions.
I do not have adequate words to even begin to relate to you what it was like. I was there, and still I have to pinch myself to realize that I lived through it. Furthermore, as I get older, I find it difficult to comprehend the enormity of the Holocaust. If you were not there, it will always remain an abstract concept, a metaphor for the ultimate evil.
Here I wish to add that yes we were murdered, but Jews also resisted. This year marks 66 years since the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising.
On the eve of Passover 1943, it started. One of the most symbolic battles of World War II – and the first popular uprising in a Nazi-occupied city.
Through active resistance, Jewish fighters managed to delay the Nazis’ final liquidation of the ghetto for nearly a month.
Particularly troubling is the resurgence of anti-Semitism around the globe. For a while, I was sure that I would never again witness anti-Semitism. And yet, here we are, six decades later it manifests itself in a new and insidious form. Synagogues and Jewish cemeteries are being desecrated.
[We were] somewhat naive in thinking that the Holocaust would teach the world tolerance and understanding.
L’Dor v’Dor ... Generation to generation … is a concept in Judaism that ensures that the teaching of the Torah, of knowledge and faith, is passed on from generation to generation! We must follow this tradition of Holocaust remembrance. The world must learn from the past, in order to make this a better place for now and the future.
We must teach compassion, we must eradicate racism and religious persecution. We must teach ourselves, teach each other, teach our children, each generation must learn.
This evening, here in Vancouver, we are following this Jewish concept. This evening I feel the love and care here amongst all of you. We have a very active Holocaust Education Centre, where we spread our message of love and inoculate young students and everyone against hatred, intolerance, racism and indifference. That is love in its highest form.
The Jewish Holocaust will always remain a powerful lesson against racism and hatred, and we must always continue to reaffirm our commitment to uphold human rights for all and to value diversity.
As survivors of the Shoah, it is our sacred duty and obligation to speak for those that perished. And [for] those of us who were children, it is particularly meaningful to do this in honor of the memory of the one-and-a-half million Jewish children brutally murdered.
This evening I stand here in front of you as a man who made a life here in this unique place called Canada. Happily married to Gloria with two wonderful children, Arlaina and Howard and son in-law Ian. And now, proud grandparents of two wonderful grandkids, Ava and Kira.
I am assured by the next generation of our Holocaust centre here in Vancouver that our legacy of remembrance and education will continue. And I am grateful and enormously proud of all of them.
Simon Wiesenthal, of blessed memory, said “I believe in God and the world to come and when they ask me, ‘what did you do?’ I will say ‘I did not forget you.’
I want to end with Elie Wiesel’s words: “Remember, for there is, there must be, hope in remembering.”
Thank you.