An Evening with Dr Walter Ziffer, Holocaust Survivor

[Applause] Thank You dr. King for this lovely introduction and thank you professor case Baker for making this possible but there's a third person I have to thank that's my wife my wife Gail and without her I would not be here in fact thousands of people would not have heard my story but it's thanks to her and the the year that the hours she's spending on email and on telephone trying to organize things with the various people who are responsible for these talks without her nothing nothing would have happened and this wouldn't have happened so thank you I really am humbled by these introductions I have to tell you this and I want to thank you all for inviting me to come to your school to speak here you invited me because I know a Holocaust survivor the Holocaust being undoubtedly as you heard from dr. King the most horrific and the most deadly event of the 20th century no question about that was genocide it was the ultimate crime against humanity perpetrated by human beings it was an organized mass murder of six million people innocent human beings children women men all innocent and this sort of thing does not happen overnight I don't want to impress that on you ant assistant is anti-semitism let me stop here for a moment does everybody know what anti-semitism means but would those of you who do know would you raise your hands okay well that this is a compliment to the school that you're in because you've heard the word somewhere must have heard it here also or perhaps for the first time in so anti-semitism is is really hatred of all that touches relates to Judaism and to Jewish people and to Jewish practice and contrary to what you might think this thing has been around for 19th centuries nineteen long centuries in various parts of Europe in the Middle East in North Africa and it it's something totally unique in in form of organization and talking now about the Holocaust in form of its execution in form of its number of people that were touched and that were annihilated that were from from from whom their life was taken away in old age on young age even his babies of course so I want you to know one thing and that always bothers me when I get an invitation to speak to a small group a big group of whatever that I have not come here to entertain you with my story there are zillions of stories that are more important than mine and even more horrific than mine have come here because of I want to make a contribution to your education and to know about the Holocaust is really something absolutely necessary I came here to impress you that the Holocaust did happen and that was pointed out by Professor Casey already yes it did happen contrary to those who deny that it happened and who suggest that this is an invention of some Jewish people I want you to know and again this is terribly important even before I start telling with my story that the German Chancellor Adolf Hitler was not a madman he was not crazy contrary to what people have suggested it was not crazy he was a vile mean-spirited monster he was a megalomaniac it was a man who wanted to see himself and he was seen all the time every day and he wanted for people to hear him and he was heard just about every day on the radio I heard him my parents heard him and he made us sick and he wanted really to rule the whole world those who disagreed with him fell from his grace and we're simply eliminated you can eliminate people legally or they certainly gali I want you to know so I came here because I fear that many nations and their leaders in our present time have never learned or have already forgotten the lessons the lessons that past history offers us Germany between 1939 and 1945 was really at the zenith of political and military success and then came the descent into chaos many millions of people lost their lives and that includes Germans of course and then the became post war suffering Germans of course and many other nations and then came a descent into chaos many millions of people's lives were lost and then came post-war suffering we don't realize how far these these terrible situations stretch out beyond the the official end you might say so Hitler thought he could stand up and again against the whole world he just knew that others were ignorant he just knew he considered himself to be a Superman this thinking made no sense of course and it makes no sense now in various other nations the United States of America that I love that has offered me a haven as a refugee from communism when I came here in 1948 a country that I loved as I said made no mistake in our modern world there is no country including our own country that can go it alone nowadays it doesn't work and we and our leaders sometimes think that we know and that the rest of the world is ignorant wrong I show you we have to cooperate with others and perhaps we all are to some extent ignorant so I beg you to listen very carefully to what I am going to tell you and I beg you to learn from what I am going to tell you and those of you who are students here I beg you to continue talking about yourself to yourselves with you with with your friends and to discuss things with your teachers and to ask your teachers about advice here and there we cannot go it alone I've learned that over a long period of time so let me also say that I have confidence in you because I have confidence in this school about which I've heard a lot of good things being said that you people are learning important things and that you people will make a difference in the lives of your own families and yourselves and among other people with whom you'll have relationships so I've heard the number of Holocaust survivors speak not not a whole lot of them but what a good many of them and so many Holocaust survivors begin by saying you know I woke up one day and the world had changed well that's a wrong beginning in my opinion it's incorrect because anti-semitism that terrible term that I mentioned before has been around for 19 centuries and perhaps even longer than that someone to tell you one of the very first experiences of anti-semitism that I heard I am a native of cesky Church in that town in Czechoslovakia I was born in 1927 so what I'm going to tell you about happened when I was about eight or nine years old I was coming home with a friend of mine who was a Hasidic Jew some of you may not know what Hasidic means Hasidic means that he came from a family that was very observant okay my family was not very end my father that spite the fact that he was the last president of the jewish congregation in our town was not terribly observant okay we were what some called assimilated Jewish people yes we were Jews absolutely we never denied that so anyway we walk home hand in hand held hands it was a very nice-looking kid and the good good good fellow and they are railroad lines that goes through the middle of our town in order to go from one side to the other there is an underground passage so you go down a few steps then there's a tunnel like area and up a few steps on the other side so Jacob and I I Walter went down the steps we went down in the tunnel it was dark down there and suddenly rocks were being thrown at us and people were screaming people young people our age people little older people than I should jeddak spinner visited she'd in just about all Slavic languages means Jew and spin idiotic means filthy little Jew in the rocks with we're coming at us and so he and I started running we saved ourselves I saved myself behind the door of an apartment house that had a glass door and could see what was going on he was running in the other direction and a bunch of kids behind him well at that very point when they were about to grab this kid Jakub my friend the town idiot came about what's a town idiot well in Europe there are such crazy things as town idiots he was a man who was mentally challenged he looked rather strange okay he had long hair blond hair curly hair deeply lined face and he picked up the trash in the street and the droppings of the horses he came with a two-wheeled cart picked up Jacob put him on on on his cart he looked like a Roman charioteer and off he went and deposited this little boy in front of the house of his parents his father was a tailor now this is a simple story but there's much more behind that story because I want to tell you what would have happened if Jacob and I had been caught that is that the important point because that happened to a number of other kids well what would have happened is that they would have pulled down his pants and his underpants they would have looked at his penis it is in Jewish tradition circumcised and young people's penises in he in Europe at that time were not circumcised so that's a sign he is a Jew and we are circumcised because of a commandment that we find in the book of Genesis given to Abraham okay so whether it's good or bad we're not going to discuss here if you don't know what circumcision is this is not Show and Tell Oh anyway he and I would have beaten would have been beaten up that's that's what would have happened and that sort of thing marks you for the rest of your life and the other anti-semitic motions and things that happen to Jews that mark you and so for instance I am still not quite over this having lived in America since 1948 faith for the eight many Jews still look over the shoulders to see who is following them now this is hard to understand for people who've been born here brought out here in a country of freedom this is not to say that anti-semitism is gone from America it's still here and not so long ago Jews could not become members of the asheville country club okay it's fairly recent change okay so propaganda what what what I want to ask you and I want you to think about this how did these kids just a little bit older than I and Jacob how did they learn to become anti-semitic give us give it some thought where could they have learned this where they've learned it from the parents they've learned it from the preachers from the priests from the teachers are you with me okay that's what education does to you bad education fortunately we're better off in America than we were in Europe in at that particular time okay so propaganda people are being poisoned and they were poisoned German propaganda was fantastically strong anti-semitic propaganda was powerful and you heard it again and again and the outcome of it was that six million people were murdered 14 people in my own family how could it that happened people disappeared now if somebody disappeared from the house next to yours would you make any move would you ask where these people were taken to or went to I think you probably would well in that particular time in Europe nobody asked people disappeared I haven't one unconfirmed who simply disappeared he didn't come back after the war his name also happened to be Walter by the way so so what happened so in Europe I wanted to know everybody was a Christian in Germany most of them were Lutheran's somewhere Roman Catholics so what happened to the teaching of Jesus love your neighbor as yourself what happened to it we'd like for you to think about this I mean this is serious stuff I mean I would just mousing things or have we internalized some of the teachings that tell us how important love is so when people disappear you have to ask questions and when you find out what happened to them you have to protest and let me tell you something else that you may or may not know if you haven't studied the subject when I speak as I do now to you you may think that all the Germans were Hitler rights they were not there was what's called a confessing Church in Germany and you may have heard some of you may have heard about a man called Dietrich Bonhoeffer for instance who once cried out rotas he said vanished to the US right that earthly outlet Gregorian is ringing he who doesn't cry out for Jews must not ever have the guts the gumption to sing the Dorian chant in a church I mean there were people who were righteous absolutely there was in in Berlin a Roman Catholic priest who was the Canon of the st. hedwig Church who one year before the Holocaust started in 1939 1938 in other words when during the the night of broken crystals walk through the street and saw what was happening to Jewish businesses and to Jewish people who assaulted whose properties were decimated was stolen who were forced to clean sidewalks with the toothbrushes and people enjoyed that and laughed about it and that particular man Bernard Lichtenberg father Bernard Lichtenberg in every Mass he bid in his church he said in his church he prayed for the Jewish people and the way gestapo people there the way SS people there and he was arrested a number of time and he was finally arrested for the last time was sent to the concentration camp of the house and died on the train there were decent people there you may have heard I want to mention one more a Christian pastor by the name of nee Miller who said this first they came for the Communists but I was not a communist so I did not speak up then they came for the Socialists but I was not a socialist so I did not speak up then they came for the Jews and I was not a Jew and so I did not speak up and then they came for me and then there was no one left to speak up for me you may have heard that before it's a fantastic saying and it's a true saying something that makes sense so we have to speak up yes and the other thing that I tell my students you know I've asked them why are you a Christian why are you a Jew and the people that young people look at me and said well well it is because you were born into a Jewish family because you were born into a Christian family very few people change their faith that's why you are that and for that you're going to be killed because we were born to parents whom you didn't choose the thing is mad the thing is insanity unfortunately insane people around us okay so let me tell you how it started for me I was 12 years old when the Nazis occupied my town was September 1st 1939 outbreak of world war ii that night went to bed you know I woke up early the next morning 1 September 2nd and I couldn't fall back asleep something scary was going on in my mind and so I went in search of my dad my dad was my idea my father was the best father in the world as was my mother the best mother in the world and I found my father not lying next to my mother but on a balcony in back of the house and my father was white as the environment here the walls and I walked up to my dad and I said what's going on and my dad said listen Walter you and I listened I heard this chaotic noise things breaking crushing things being busted up singing heard mixed together you know and so I asked my dad what's going on and my dad very quietly with his heads with his hands on my head said to me Walter I think they are burning our synagogue you know what a synagogue is ok it's like a church for Christians synagogue for Jews I could see my father was terribly upset I didn't understand too much about it they're ashes in the air that settled on me I was scared went back to bed the next morning we went out to see what had happened and our synagogue was in ruins there were few walls standing the scrolls you could see inside because the windows were busted out stained-glass windows all the glass lying around on the ground the holy scrolls the tiny synagogue Genesis to Deuteronomy in Hebrew were unrolled smoking still and I looked I didn't understand I was 8 or 9 years old and there were people standing around there now I said I didn't understand but what I really didn't understand was not what had happened to the building but the fact that nobody said hello to my father because my father was well known he was a lawyer it was a respected person in town and on Sunday morning when we walked around people would take off the hats and say good morning dr. zipper and we would my sister and I walking with my dad would say daddy who was that my dad would say if God doesn't know him better than I he's in trouble so he was very well known and on that morning when we stood there and when people walked by and said things like oh well they had it coming to them oh well how they why should they be surprised about us Jews okay on that morning nobody knew us anymore that that was the watershed you might say between us having been people who were respected with an identity and people who had become outlaws shortly afterwards we were forced to wear armbands white armbands with a blue star of david' six pointed star and then short times after maybe eight months later we had to wear a yellow star written in the middle was you did which means in German Jew so we were identified as outlaws now imagine my mother for instance who tried to buy groceries on the market had tremendous problems getting provisions for a family to eat because it was not good to be seen with a Jew in the street or in the market fortunately my mother had a wonderful reputation and the farmers who brought the things in were good to us and they just took care of us so we never went hungry during during that particular time and then evictions began evictions we were evicted four times the first time with beautiful apartment my father had about 2,000 books in his library everything had to be left there we walked out with I don't know a few suitcases clothing we had had a maid before the war we were able to give to to her a couple of oil pictures that my mother loved threw coins maybe gold coins silver coins I really don't know but that woman was the only only person that took care of us who expressed her love for us and took a tremendous chance to save these things for us to scroll things ahead let me tell you that when we finally came back from the concentration camps she returned to us every one piece we had given to her a wonderful wonderful woman Multi Korea novels name we loved her as much almost as much as we loved our mother so evictions evictions evictions squeeze together more and more people into smaller smaller spaces and we finally ended up in a ghetto and the ghetto was at the periphery in the periphery of our town and old entertainment complex that had not been functioning for many many years cobwebs everywhere huge halls like this two or three of them and people strung wires crosswise and hung sheets or other pieces of of clothing of of material on these wires to create little compartments twelve by twelve or something like that and there were a thousand people in that in that ghetto well you can you don't have to use a lot of imagination to think to imagine what things looked like and how people lived but having suggested to you that it was a horrible time for these thousand people I want to tell you it was one of the best times in my life and that doesn't make sense does it but it does make sense if you know what love means because I fell in love with a little girl was just a not a year older than I was golden hair and green eyes and I loved her to pieces and it was reciprocated and we played ping pong and she lost every match and she just left and her laughter was like to me sounded like silver bells going off so we loved each other and then one evening we my father my mother and my sister and I lived on the stage of one of these dance halls and there were two other families on each side Lydia was her name she came to see me in the evening instead Walter I have sad news and I said okay what is it and she said my parents decided to escape from the ghetto from destiny to somehow get east to Poland and then later on into into Russia which was still a haven for Jewish people at that time well I was a terrible shock obviously we embraced me said goodbye and tears streaming down our faces and about ten days later someone came to my father and told him that the family Rendell that was the name father mother and Lydia had been found shot dead and well that was a traumatic experience for me obviously and I've never forgotten it when she said goodbye to me she took off a little pendant of a gold chain that she wore and it was a little golden a tiny little pendant a yolk with a with a disc turning inside and when you twirl the disc it spelled out I love you and she gave it to me and said well whatever happens you'll have this memento from me and your twirl it every sometimes in think of me I have a cheap replica of it in my pocket and I've carried that replica with me for decades actually and I've never forgotten or on June 28th the motorcycles and trucks that surrounded the ghetto and the people on foot that radios it was announced to us that the following day we would be resettled in the east the Germans had a wonderful way of youth of you from isin terrible words resettling in the east could mean going to Auschwitz and being gassed and just getting out of the camps but via the chimney restructuring in the east and so on the 29th my mother had packed a suitcase for each one of us as mothers do I had a piece of bread in there and sausage and underwear of course we left our house the ghetto placed the stage and there were Jewish people from various outbuildings in the ghetto coming out under guard we were taken down to a turn to a concentration place which was an old junkyard actually and there we had to hand over all of our belongings our valuable belongings like coins watches wedding rings gold chains ankle chains to the SS who were seated behind long tables with a whip on the table and a handgun on the table we had to pay it by and hand things over and that's when again a second traumatic moment in my life occurred because it was then that I saw for the first time people with blood streaming down from the faith the heads over their faces because they had been taken out of the line to be checked whether they had handed over their valuables and I guess in some cases people had not ended over everything and were beaten up and then literally kicked out of this barn like building with blood flowing down the faces I never forget that then we waited waited for the train store to come but prior to that we were separated from each other old people young people middle-aged people men and women all separate groups and when I was separated from my parents that was the SS they did that when I was separated from my from from my parents and was told to go over to that group my mother ran behind me and said Walter Walter don't leave us and an SS man walked up to an here over the shoulder and I don't know what he said to her and shot her back into the group of middle-aged women and I was alone for the first time in my life with a bunch of young people whom I had known who had worked in a factory during night shift prior to this deportation and I was desperate I was scared everybody was scared again scrolling ahead a little bit there were 15 people and myself among the kids that I knew from that experience of working at night shift in that Factory and out of the 16 two survived fellow by the name of Berger I have no contact with he may have died he went to Israel after liberation and I came to France to the United States so that was deportation now I was sort of forced through seven different camps somewhere slave labor camps Swank's arbors lager as it's called in German and the last two where concentration camps and I cannot tell you all the things that happened in each camp obviously we have time limitations here and I'm probably way too far along already but I will tell you a little bit about general conditions and then I'll take one or two camps and tell you about them so general conditions food we received about between 10 and 12 ounces of food the only solid food per day okay that was handed out at night was these were round breads the my fellow prisoners got this from the refectory and they were cut like we cut a pizza you know into sectors eight sectors and we picked up one of these sections as we walked by the table and when he saw you and cut the bread and liked you I had a relationship with you will cut that it's a little bigger well you can get only eight out of one piece of bread that meant that one or two became smaller when I was a little kid and when I walked by nobody really gave a hoot about me and I probably ended up with 10 ounces of bread per day and then there was also a bowl that we had and that was for receiving coffee quote/unquote at night was bitter lukewarm water and that was liquid and then we received at the work site a soup and that soup was made from peels potato peels and beetles and they settled at the bottom and so when we came by with our boss the person who would use the ladle would again if he liked you if he knew you from somewhere if you could use you in some way went down with a ladle deep you have played above full of potato peels where did the solid stuff isn't so good try it sometimes but you know it was solid and then you know a little kid comes by and you take it from the top and you have you have a bowl full of lukewarm water but maybe with 12 or 20 little peels swimming around in the water so that that was food okay clothing you've seen concentration came people on your television set blue white stripes pajama like building clothing let me tell you that the weave of this clothing was so loose that if I had the piece of it here and looked through it I'd see you we never received any underwear we got a piece of clothing about that big same stuff as the pants and the jacket was made of to put into our wooden shoes these were our socks we never received any gloves that was out of question we had a little Darrell type blue white striped for our heads that that was the clothing the wind blew right through you then there was work we woke up and was dark we marched out and we came back in was dark but I don't want at this point to tell you what the roll call was like toward the last year year and a half we were sort of driven by the police by the camp police couples as they were called out of our rooms of a barracks to stand lined up five deep for the rock roll call winter or summer rain snow same we were there now suppose you stand at alcohol and you need to go to the bathroom whereas the students I'd talk to a lot of middle middle middle school classes you know what do you do when you go to need to go to the bathroom in the middle of a class well they raise my hand teacher may I go to the bathroom oh of course go you know you couldn't do that you were not allowed to do that and so people who most older people who had no control over the bodies anymore urinated into the pants and did number two into the pants in wintertime the urine would run down the legs into the wooden shoes and the wooden shoes would actually freeze to the ground and then after have been counted over and over and over because that the numbers never checked out those people had died during the night or people had been shot during the night people had committed suicide during the night it never dived so we're there for an hour standing in the snow and ice and people got frozen to the ground and then came the command turn the right March and they couldn't move and so we who were younger who had more control of our bodies at that point still would walk up to those poor people well usually you know one or two here one day one behind and we would kick our wooden shoes against theirs to loosen them and they would get loose but what happened is that under one shoe there would be that much snow and ice and under the next the other shoe nothing what happens you limp so you March and the guards right and left with her dogs and there's and in their arms the word they always heard that I heard from them always schnell schnell schnell faster faster faster in German people would fall we would have to walk over them we couldn't help them and then we heard a shot on the way home we saw the corpses lying in the that to me that Appel they called it the Appel the roll call was one of the most horrible times that I absolutely drag it and people lost their lives that way so you get an idea of what life was like they add to this now infestation with lice during the last year and a half two years if you were infested with lice you try to clean ourselves up before getting into a bunks straw bunks and try to pull the lice out of our friends and ourselves be careful because if you left a little bit in there now a little leg of the lives tiny little thing you get infected and you get infected you were as much as dead believe me because I lived something like that myself came out of it alive fortunately but you were sent at that point to gross-rosen which was the main camp of all didn't work my last camp and they had a shooting wall there that was about the size from this door to that door they lined up the tpod machine gun them and that was the end of it because if you couldn't work you will useless to the German government or to the company that employed these slaves so add to this humiliations filth no water during the last two years because they were losing the war the Nazis and that affected us in very very bad ways of course filth now add to that and that is my last point describing to you life in a camp they took away my name in one point I'm not sure whether it was the last camp or the previous one they took our rags away from us that we had still brought from home or gotten during the camp experience and after shower we came out and they were Dench's out there and there were bundles of clothing there and well you just walked up to a bundle and took it and you found that that bundle that blue stripe thing had a number on it and a yellow triangle and the number my number happened to be 64 thousand seven hundred and fifty seven and my name was gone now I want you to talk with your friends to sort of find out yourselves what it means to become a number rather than a human being with a name there is a good reason for that and maybe you can come up with it I'll leave that as a cliffhanger for you figure it out yourselves okay so that was life in camp and there was I mean you think that when people live together as prisoners there'll be cohesiveness there will be solidarity well think again because when you become a zombie as we did totally exhausted skeletons that were covered with skin you have to fight for your own life you don't particularly care for the person next to you you don't care for them except for exceptional human beings which I was not I didn't care I was like the rest of it so let me tell you one camp experience and when did we begin six o´clock was it okay well it's not so it's not so bad okay thank you my first camp was a camp by the name of chakra and all these names are German names because wherever the Germans arrived and occupied they renamed the place so Sakura had a Polish name pride previously in brandy which is the camp I want to tell you about also had a Polish name which I'm not gonna bother you with you couldn't pronounce it anyway so it was in December right around Christmas time of during Christmas that we arrived at the camp of brandy PRA and de and I remember walking through the snow from where we had arrived with a train where we had been pushed out from on outside of the Train cattle trains to the other many people falling out being stepped on I was pretty agile I jumped out got on my two feet marching through the snow toward a camp okay a camp and I remember distinctly seeing on the horizon little houses that was the village of Bronte german village polish village no german village and through the windows we saw little lights and these lights probably were Christmas tree lights because it was Christmas time and we I sort of thought I heard little music wafting over toward us and I saw recognized this music and it probably was Mozart my guess we trudged through the song and we finally arrived and there was a big gate and the name of the camp was on the gate constant at Jones locker Brandi something like that and I heard a voice behind me saying wow isn't that wonderful we are coming to the camp of brandy that is a camp where there's nobody there's no construction site we're not going to have to work this is a convalescence camp for inmates that are tired that need to be fixed up to be able to go to work again afterward well so that sounds pretty good you know convalescence camp we got into Brown day and there was a roll call of course and interestingly as I said my name and that was just before we became nah by the way that that happened in a later camp so I said Walters if ur now in every camp there was a camp commandant within the camp a fellow prisoner and then there was there were the guard outside in barracks and that was the commander there was a German very often an S and SS or this type of person or what have you so I mentioned my name Walter Zephyr and the inmate commandant at that point came to me and said to me are you the son of dr. Zephir from teshon Chesky Chechnya and I said yes and he said well I know your father and you're going to be my special servant I trust you something like that so tomorrow morning a couple one of the scan policemen fellow prisoners will tell you you know what to do what your job is going to be well I felt good we were dismissed we went toward the barracks that were assigned to us bunk beds three stories high straw and well that was exhausting fell asleep early the next morning I was I was waked up by couple who took me to the camp commandant the prisoner came commanded his name was Gabor and he actually told me when he had lived in a town called the elko which exists today not very far from where my town was and then I was initiated to the job okay shining of boots black boots you know just like the Nazis Eisenhower jacket if I remember correctly and riding pants and I had to make a fire early in the morning and in his wood stove and something very important he opened the box underneath is stable I opened it and what was in the box bread pieces of bread some still in packages so he said mine kleiner if you know German my client means my little one that's what he called me there's bread down there you can help yourself from that but anytime you want to but then you open a little closet there were jars in there was margarine there there were pieces of bread in there he said if I ever catch you eating some of that you're out well I remember that I was happy that was bread there okay interestingly enough as I later looked the packages were addressed to inmates in the camp which were intercepted by mr. Gabor and all ended up in that box a box that was open to people privileged like myself and certain couples ten policemen etc etc okay I was happy I'm gonna have a pretty good life here well come the next or the after next roll call in the morning so we stand there oh that must have been it's a small camp less than a thousand people I would say stand there lined up fight leap and the gate opens and mr. Pompeo mte you can find him on the internet by the way of google the name comes in he limps he has a sort of violet dark violet uniform on and comes out with his whip in his hand gone of course at his belt and he comes and inspects us and he walks by and there he takes his whip and he hits you over the head just just and you step out and then you lady in white he comes to you hits you on your head you step out and so 10 to 14 people form a separate group and these people are marched off now by a Kemp policeman we are dismissed in the sense that we go now to jobs within the camp there was no mouse telling no construction site cleaning the sidewalks summer time cutting the grass washing the floors in our barracks etc etc and then we I hear screaming coming from the war spirit screaming screaming live never heard of and I don't know what this is about and so I asked one of the inmates there what's that screaming about and the man listens to me says not a word and walks away from me and I did that with one two possibly three people same same reaction well I did my job I don't know what I was doing and drilling a hole I think into the ground some sticks to go in there but about two or three weeks later a camp policeman comes to me with two young people with him already and says to me come with me and he takes us to the war spirit to where again that particular morning those say twelve people had been marched off to and I've heard that screaming and I walk in and what I see makes it impossible to tell you it's beyond description because these twelve people are corpses that are lying around the wash barrack Tasha was there in various places in absolutely weird positions with arms hanging from the bodies and I mean total deformed bodies and we are we are ordered to take these corpses put them on a on a on a wheel two-wheeled cart and cart them into neighbor woods to dump them into a mass grave shovel a few shovels of earth on this return to the camp clean up the war spirits these bodies lie in filth in urine in water and in blood and that's undescribable I can see it but I cannot convey to you really what I saw now I knew what happened in the wash barracks but I still didn't know how these people were being murdered and so again I asked some some of the inmates that had been there before and one person volunteered to tell me what happened how he knew it I do not know but what happened did that mr. Pompeii the head of the German guard who by the way had lost his lower leg during World War one head is fun with his people he gave them cold showers and the water was ice-cold all the time but there we have big vats in the wash barrack in which the inmates boiled the underwear of the guards and that was done in in families - my mother boiled our underwear in pots that that that's how it was done hygiene well these were big vats with boiling water in there and so to kill these people they were given cold showers ice-cold showers and then via pots of pans or whatever they had there they were this boiling water was thrown at them alternately while the the the people chased them around I mean the guards chased them around the building beating them in the meantime until the people expired entertainment is really pure entertainment whether that happened in other camps I do not know but again you can read some of this online and I told you that the camp was known as a convalescence camp there was a scribe in that camp his name was born Stein he wanted the world to know what was going on really in that camp and so he tried to smuggle out a letter by a Polish worker would came and of fix the plumbing of the electricity and that letter was intercepted by the Nazis by mr. Pompey's people and I happened to be present when that man that the young man born Stein was brought in into the refectory and mr. kabiri my boss was already there and there were couples there and there were German guards there the man is brought in and pompay walks up to him pulls out the piece of paper and says to mr. Bernstein this young man a very myopic character says did you write this letter and Bernstein said yes and as soon as he said yes they started beating on him with leather whips and they beat him until he became a piece of flesh and I mean really a lump of flesh you could harvest the clothing had been beaten of him his glasses were bitten of him his eyes were beaten out of his sockets and when his glasses glasses fell off Pompey I can hear this to this day stepped on it and I hear the crushing sound of the glasses when he broke the glasses then they asked the couples to take that lump of flesh and dump it into the coal chute under the wash barrack and that night we heard howling and screaming and noises which I've never heard before hope to god I never hear again and toward morning or the subsided because bourne-style died so that was the convalescence camp of brandy okay they have a few other camps to follow there was the kind of graded which was an interesting camp I want to tell you about briefly that was a German airforce installation and we moved machinery and furniture there and that was a good camp because it was like a city a small city and it was an Air Force Base there were garbage cans there and we marched through the town pushing you know working there and marching there and pushing the equipment around but there were the garbage cans and the airforce people the German people didn't care they they were in charge there and so I remember picking through the garbage and there were sandwiches there that had been thrown away that had turned green I'm not telling you a lie here and we ate that stuff we ate it ravenously and so that was a pretty cool camera credits and once something happened that wasn't so good because Allied bombers came and bombed the area and when that happened there there were alarms going on during in World War two when Allied planes came over the area and dropped the bones so we had to jump into ditches at that point now if I told you that we had wooden shoes with cloth tops and these cloths tops had shoelaces in they're just regular shoelaces but how long does a shooter has remain a shoelace you know when he works with dirt and health so shoelaces they give out and while during that bomb raid we were in in a ditch one of the men not far from me saw a piece of wire and he jumped out of the ditch to get that piece of wire to use it as a shoelace he was as soon as the alarm went off he was taken out of the group taken back to the camp and was hanged in the camp as we arrived there were gallows and he was swinging in the wind and the camp commander came and gave us a big speech on how German property must never be stolen this is war time and that's how he being punished that was graded I'm trying to stay within time here it's ok good so another story now that that will tell you just a little bit about what happened in Germany I was in the camp of shmita Berg that was a mountain that had been hollowed out with a factory in there to produce I'm not sure either v1 or v2 s these were missiles but not guided missiles that the Germans shot into England but they just fell into into fields and onto mountains and also into London and caused a lot of damage no question about that well I had a very privileged job there we were building bunkers to test the engines of these either v1 to v2 s and these bunkers were made of concrete we rebuilt these so there were two plates in the ground and concrete would be poured in but within the concrete there had to be a skeleton type of a mesh type of metal and to make that the rebars you know what the rebars are that had to be bent into certain shapes and so I got the job of working in the machine they bent the rebars after a predecessor really nice-looking young man had been killed on that machine because it was a big platform with with I wish I could describe that with a big arm deterrent and on the arm the holes and we put pegs steel pegs into these holes and then the rebar was slid in between the arm and the stationary peg and the they aren't turned and bent the rebar and that had to be done two dimensions at the blueprint to go by and the machine was set up for that and that poor boy poor boy was working a machine was caught by the arm and his body was smashed and when they pulled him out he was either dead or I got the job so it was a good job because the machine did all the work you don't expand your personal strength so at one point the German engineer comes to me and says follow me and I follow him and we go to a small little barrack place office on the construction site desk lay in the cupboard and he stands but he sits behind the desk and he says we're going to change the dimension of the rebars that are being bent and he pulls out a blueprint and puts it out before me and said this is a new shape that you are going to bend to it was pretty smart little kid and I was by then probably 16 years old and I dimensions showing you where to bend and which way and then there is a dimension for the total lengths as well and the little one dimensions the short ones have to add up to the total simple stuff I respect it and so I added them up and they didn't add up and so I'm standing in front of him he sits behind this desk and I said to him sir there's something wrong my native language is German by the way that's what we spoke at home I went to check school to check is also my native language but I spoke to in German I said sir this doesn't it doesn't work and as soon as I say this he just sits there shakes his head and says nothing and I just stand there you know my concentration camp clothes scared to death and then it comes out it says you're not a Jew hello I said sir I am a Jew that's why I'm here in German of course and again there's silence and he shakes his head he said no you're not a Jew you cannot be a Jew he said and I said to him why can't I be a Jew I am a Jew he says because Jews are not able to speak German education okay I don't know from whom he learned it but this has a good ending because after he said that he walked up to his cupboard and took out his lunch box and gave me half of the sandwich so I mean I'm telling you this story because you are in a school here and from from what I hear this is a darn good school and the teachers are darn good teachers and you get a done good education but the kids in Germany did not the kids in Germany were told lies from first grade on and I have some instruction books at home and I didn't bring any but you can come and visit me and I'll show him to you we're from page 1 to page 82 it's one solid line about the Jews and that's how people learn how to behave because they believe this kind of stuff and then they acted out and they did well that was Peter Berg and I come to led to my last camp and that was weldin work which is a city which is south of the city of Breslau Breslau was a very very important german city it's a big Jewish background to it itself - so we were skeletons weber zombies at that point we couldn't think anymore because when you get that little food when you are beaten when you infested when you see corpses all around you I woke up one morning there was a naked corpse next to me my naked because other people saw the men die and they wanted his pants and his jacket to add to their own to keep the cold out you know so I mean you just lose all your orientation no calendar no time that was dark and light day and night that's all we knew time-wise was it 11 o'clock 4 o'clock in the afternoon no idea zombies so involved in work there was a construction site and the involvement work we were supposed to lower a huge territory of rock solid rock - in low in level where they didn't have the machinery at that point was getting pretty late during the war and so we were drilling holes with drilling holes and in order to get there we had to march through the main street of altenburg well we march through the city and it was still dark usually and the apartment houses right and left and I remember looking longingly into the windows of the apartment houses because that reminded me of my past that's how we lived decently humanely in apartments and every so often I saw the venetian blinds move or curtain move and I saw a part of a face peeking through these were Germans whom we woke up because the guards cursed us and there were shots fired every sofa and the dogs barked so they came to the windows to see what was happening after the war all these people said oh we didn't know with no idea there was a camp in town but they did they did and so at this point we passed by a church it was dark as I said foggy and I see a person running out from behind the church with a little package and that person throws a package into our ranks I happen to touch that package I was just a little thing about that big but that sake and the hands all over me right now they want to grab this piece for the weight is in there from me well we rip open the paper was two slices of bread with little margarine in between call that a sandwich if you want to okay so I I really was able to get a piece of bread into my mouth the rest of it was gone was taken by others shots rang out and we marched on I was very grateful I didn't think but and I was grateful for the piece of bread it made all the difference in my life it's so Marchon we dig holes into the bedrock with big rod steel rods rather big around about six and a half feet tall two piece of two people opposite each other holding the rod lifting it a thought letting a drop lifting it turning it letting it drop lifting a training letting until the hole was made about that big then we were evacuated the Germans came in couldn't dynamite into the holes blew it up the new level was exposed I mean I'm simplifying things for you because while we were doing it with a cursed and with a beaten and you can imagine all the risk so I get back to camp at night and I want to take my shoe off my shoe is stuck to something I managed to get it off then there is a little piece of cloth it stuck to my foot and I take that off and then my foot is damaged because I told you that short bang out I don't think anybody shot into my shoe but it may may have been a wreck oh she a lead bullet I have no idea it was so cold there was practically no blood there there was a viscous force their yellowish I didn't you're a zombie you don't know what's going on so I climbed into my strop bunk went to sleep and that went on for two days three days eventually my foot start turning greenish and purplish and I swelled up I couldn't get back into my shoe so I went to the little Hospital quote-unquote there were two Dutch doctors say Jewish doctors inmates who say oh my god you should have come here earlier this this this is no good this is really no good I hope you're not gonna lose your foot okay that's what they say they clean that my the wound alcohol I went through the ceiling you know you still don't understand what's going on you're in a different world and then they hit me under under the bunk bed with with sheets hanging down on both sides and at the top I was on the floor underneath how they managed the roll call I do not know they did it I remember one thing that I want to share at one point somebody picked up that sheet to put a bowl with soup toward me and I peeked out and I saw six feet away from me a foot that had five black toes and a hand with a pair of pliers and one side pliers I mean pliers know that those pliers did go like that up picking off the toes and it did nothing to me I pulled in the bowl of soup and aided ravenously had become a complete zombie I didn't understand what was going on I was healed my foot healed and went back to work and that was toward the end so people took their lives they put their lives online I like these two doctors to save my life because had an SS person found out what they had done hiding me it would it would have been the end for that person so tell me let me tell you about my liberation it was roll call involved in work again we stand there and we wait you know to be told turn right March there was a triple fence around these these claims the inner fence was a low wire that was electrically charged and every other day there were people hanging on that wire who had committed suicide there were three gates that the two the two high fences at the gate and then that little thing was stopped there and had a little gate so the gate opened and the German SS commander comes in he walks up to the internal commander and they've exchanged some words he comes in all alone mind you okay then he turns around and walks out in the meantime I look at the towers that surround the camp that have a machine gun up there and a big reflector to light up the camp at night and I know this despite my zombie-ism that there is nobody up in up in those towers there's nobody there well I noticed it but I couldn't figure out what it meant and so okay this guy comes in he walks out and as he walks out he takes a big key ring from his belt and throws it into the camp across the fence and we stand there there was no idea what's going on because I wasn't the only zombie they were all zombies couldn't figure out what was going on we stand there waiting for the command turned much turned right March and then we heard an engine sound coming closer and closer and closer and around the corner of the camp comes a single Soviet tank there was a soldier standing in the turret and the tank drives into the fences and smashes one whole side of the fence of the turtle fence smashes it and keeps on going and we stand there and we have no idea what's going on and so we standard maybe I'm guessing maybe half an hour and then the guy next to me says I think it's over he said let's organize some food that that's camp language organized means try to get some food and so here I leave the rows were breaking up at that point but he and I walked out of the camp into the city of oldenburg down there main street where we had marched through every time a totally abandoned nobody in the streets and we see a truck standing there and we climb on the truck a German military truck and the shelves in there and on the shelves are cans and so this fellow is older than I got a screwdriver from somewhere with punch holes into the cane pry open the cans and it's white grease but it smells deliciously it was pork grease and we go in with our hands and shove it into our mouths and underneath that much grease there sport the chunks of meat and we eat that and we open clay and after Ken I don't can't tell you how many cans and then we start three or four sacks in the truck bed we slice that open and it's sugar and we get on our force and internals and then everything went black and I remember nothing and then I woke up I'm still here I must have woken up so I woke up and I'm in a bed between two white sheets and I look to the right there's another bed there and this other guy said is in that bed and opposite means a cuckoo clock and I do not know who I am I think at that point now maybe what I'm gonna tell you now is something that I acquired later but I didn't know whether I was in heaven or in hell because you know in the religion religion classes we learned about heaven and hell well in heaven whether I'll tell these little cute kids with with red cheeks appear at cheeks down here and little wings you know and they weren't there and the hell well clearly this wasn't hell they don't live in Hell between two white sheets the cuckoo clock so that may have been something I invented later on it's possible but then the door opened and the tiny little woman maybe four and a half feet tall dressed in black came into the room she saw me lying there with open eyes and she sat down on my bed next to me and she said to me in German of course yes yes this is forever down the creek forlorn fry now it's all over with lost the war you're free and I heard that and I fell back asleep I mean you know I didn't jump out and do some kind of a ritual dance I totally exhausted then I woke up a second time and that was better because this other guy was waking up too and we stayed with this woman and she cooks the enormous parts of potato soup good stuff for us parents in it you know I remember that quite well and we stayed but you see the thing is you don't know what to do with yourself because every decision for three years that I was in these camps was made for me and I had gotten into the camp as a youngster you don't know what to do with yourself where do you go well we finally made a decision we went into the basements of these abandoned houses we broke into into stuff that was stored there all kind of cases and boxes we got ourselves clothes and got rid of this stinking messy filthy pajama like closed it closed and then we had to make a second decision what do we do with ourselves so we went back to camp of course to our home and nothing had changed everybody was still there the Weiland fires going here and there people by roasting maybe a rabbit or something or piece of bread or toast I don't know and so we just wait we wait wait for Godot dodo didn't show up well women started coming to the game and I remember three women standing by this destroyed fence and like really cranked up my courage I was very sorry or scared of my own shadow walked up to the women and said by any chance while you were in your concentration camps they had the same guards on the blue-white stuff did you ever run into a woman or two women by the name of Zephyr my name and one of the women looked at me and said yes there were two zipper women in my barrack well we're in long and below long and villa was a concentration camp for women where is that Oh 30 kilometres from here so I made my first decision maybe my zombie hood lifted at that point a little bit I walked down into the city of Rosenberg nobody there and he comes one person on the bicycle and I walked with him he came toward me and I did this I said get off the bike and he did he got off the bike we looked like hell if I may say so because we had come from hell not the kind of hell that the Bible talks about this was real a person got off I got on the boat I swear I don't know how I did this it took me two days to bicycle too long and below which is about 16 miles something like that and I arrived at the camp at the woman's came well let me tell you something the women were much more advanced than the men where are the zippers or they are in that barrack over there I walk over there and hear the women Oh zippers yes food but that's women and so invited me zephyr sound here they are out organizing food you know so I sat down I ate and I set by the door waiting for someone to come in and it was half the distance from here to the door and I waited and then the door opened and my mom marched in and my sister came with her and the cousin who later we found out had lost both her parents in Auschwitz and they came in loaded with stuff paper bags that organized food and I was sitting there and they came and they looked at me and they smiled they walked into the corner of the barrack and started unloading the food I had to walk over there and introduce myself to my mom I was a skeleton and we hadn't seen each other for three years and well I don't need to go into details about that reunion because it was fantastic I mean there was a lot of crying going on so we stayed in that camp then and there were two men that joined us that seemingly came from the same area where we lived and then started a long trek home and that was extremely difficult because all the bridges had been bombed out by the retreating German army and that whole area was liberated by Soviet troops and these troops were consisted of people from the Far Far East Far Far East who seemingly didn't have the kind of Western culture that that we heard and I hate to say this but it had to be said that these men who had liberated these women and the concentration camps were raping these women and so we traveled only at night within tribal daytime with who put us up in various old buildings and barns and fed us they gave us milk they gave us bread they gave us some hot soup and we stayed in the store and then at night we started walking and they had horse-drawn carriages helped us go back home there was one woman who came up to us just sad as can be and say Oh mrs. river you have come back and walked away sad as can be I can tell you more about that if you have any questions about then a second woman came up smiling happy Oh mrs. affair you came back you survived wonderful do you know your husband is in town no we didn't know that we had not known that for years with not knowing what had happened to my father and so where was he he was in their little apartment of our maid whom I mentioned before and so my mom dispatched me to get my father and Mulkey the name of this woman opened the door and I mean she was so happy to see me I suppose my father and my father was in a room adjoining that entrance all in a corner looking at the wall and I walked up to him and I said we called him Tati I'm here she showed no emotion and I finally just took him with me back to my mom and well that's basically the end of the story because he another chapter begins because we were reunited and I don't want to go into details about that but to make a long story short in 1940 wait for this well 1947 it so happened that coming is that we heard about communists being ready to take over our country and I had just lost years years that should have gone to an education like new people are lucky enough to have it here and so I begged my father who had who had recovered somewhat can I get out can you help me to get out of here I wanted to leave Europe and my father had a friend in Prague I placed in the government somehow and somehow got a passport and I got a visa to go to Paris France for seven days and I went and that was a blessing the only blessing that I'm sad about didn't occur is that my whole family got out I was the only one to get out my sister remained with my father was by the side of my mom and dad when they died and I was in America and I started a new life and let me say this to end this the story is scary to me as I think back I'm a free person but as I think back and realized what happened to these Germans who became Nazis and everybody didn't become a Nazi as I pointed out I wonder and I'm asked quite often can a thing like this happen here in America and I have the tendency of course to say no because I know about schools and people like you I know it's crazy this is insane to think and yet we must not make the mistake of thinking that it's impossible because the DNA of a German is the same as the DNA of an American and if it happened to them if they were sucked into this into this whole of cruelty it can happen to us - unless we listen very wet very very much and carefully to our teachers whom we have here and who hopefully are good teachers I think are good teachers in this school from what I've heard and internalize that and resist any kind of overtures that's being made by people outside of us - for instance big build big fences not to let refugees in or who building water cannons or gas who have nothing just that their lives and we're looking for freedom for a chance to live like a human being unless we take our education seriously which I think at this point is still solid because of our institutions which have not been messed up yet and hope never will be it can happen to us it can happen to us so let's be careful about that and so I want to leave you with a statement by a man his name is John Shaw I had never heard of him before until I found him in a book I can't even tell you what book it was in but a man who is truly an American prophet who says this listen to this carefully he says the future is not some place we are going but one we are creating the paths are not to be found but made and the activity of making them changes both the maker and the destination if you want is in writing send me an email and I'll give it to you but this is profound and this is what education is all about and this is what internalizing the education you get means this means being a good person and we have to to be good persons this is not given to us automatically so be good we have we have time for a question period do we how much 15 minutes wrong let me say this before we get into the question period our teachers here have my email if you have any question that you would like to end to get answered in more detail then I've then I'll be able to offer you here please send me an email you won't get an answer the next day probably not the next week but you will get an answer I guarantee you that and that's a solid promise that I'm making because to me this question period 15 minutes allows is maybe the most important thing that we have together because you have questions that I cannot guess okay so let's go any question goes yes tonight can I have help for this year because somebody needs to I forgot my hearing aids at home well thank you first of all for being here thank you first of all for being here it's really an honor and when you're when you were in getting your foot healed and you were under the sheet how many days were you there I wish I knew you know when when you become a zombie you don't know this sure I mean there's light there's darkness I was scared most of the time as I was for three years you know that looking over your back we didn't have to look back you could look in front in the tents and the camps as well you live under a cloud of fear because every time there's a roll call and this guy comes out and looks at you for no darn reason that I understand and says okay you come out here you know that this can be a death sentence certainly a brand a it was a death sentence and so then the major effort that that that had to be made and that I made was to make myself invisible never draw attention of a guard to you never because that was always catastrophic one way or another I mean they beat you up and you know you get hurt and that's the end of your life and there's no hospital I mean the hospital I mentioned had aspirin and the scalpel and alcohol that's all they had that you call the other hospital see and so it may have been I would say maybe three four or five days something like that and when you were when you were in there every morning you had roll call and all of a sudden you weren't there for a couple of days when you came back did anybody ask you where you were no no how they managed the roll call I have no idea but I wasn't the only problem you see the problem was that people died people were murdered some people died of exhaustion some were shot on the way to the worksite some were shot on the way back people died in the straw numbers never never checked out and that's why we were counted whether it was snow or ice or rain for an hour maybe you know 1 2 3 4 etc etc as we stood there you know so I mean you know I mean I wish I could explain to you all this very logically I'm not capable of doing it because I just don't know how they managed this I have no idea and some claims were better relatively better than others there's no question about it when I worked at machine bending the the rebars that that was a really good job that I was very grateful for and bran day was a death camp no not like our Suites where thousands of people were killed every day but 10 12 14 people were killed there so you know it varied this man Pompeii was evil personified that's all I can say I mean I could tell you other stories about him I can tell you stories that a person whom I know in Michigan who happened to research that camp I was there only for about half a year and I the privileged position as I mentioned there were people before I came there and the people after I left and the stories that that unbelievable I mean the man was a maniac he hated us and I was in at Heidelberg University just 10 days ago where I spoke and there I spoke very briefly about this man by the way that particular camp but I I also tried to bring this into some kind of a relationship with an explanation of of evil of ultimate evil and I'm not a psychologist but I've read up on for instance evolutionary psychology and other kinds of psychology and there are answers to to how evil continues to exist and how people fall into this into this hole and even if they want to get out can no longer go out this is not the place obviously we can do this with only at the time but the psychology and sociology and even theology has done a lot of progress or have done a lot of progress in researching these phenomena and coming up with some interesting interesting answers that make a lot of sense there is a book by James Waller that I would recommend to you and I'm not sure what the title is it has evil in it I think it's called on becoming evil I met the man actually here in North Carolina and he came up to me after he heard me speak and he gave me her his book which is a rim absolutely remarkable look James Waller wal the recommended to you evil yes questions when when you were in Heidelberg and you were talking to the students when you were in a Heidelberg and talking to the students how well informed were they about world war two the nazis all of that you don yes ok ok no you know you know and I was there I gave two two speeches and then I will participate it I think in two classes isn't that right and then during lunchtime one of their professors brought in another ten or twelve people totally unannounced and they had questions and I think there were psychology sociology majors I'm not sure so you know I did not have a whole lot of contact with the students but let me say this that the questions that were asked were very intelligent questions and let me also add to that that that is not necessarily the fact on other campuses Galen my gave my wife and I so two programs on television one at the University of Pennsylvania which is a top-notch university one of my daughters went there and the other one was a Texas Texas Tech I think it's called or something like that and there was a sort of a roving journalist that went into the campus at at the University of Pennsylvania and ask questions about Hitler about the Holocaust about World War two these kids knew nothing I mean nothing from nothing I tell you one question that particularly struck me she asked one student I think was a black student if I'm not mistaken who won the Civil War and there was hesitancy there on the part of the student and then the person said Americans you get it a Texas Tech something similar happened I don't remember the details anymore was that the Texas Tech okay I had backwards so you know that blows my mind however because things worked out the way they work out the Holocaust is receding into the past I'm 19 years old I just passed 90 in March how long am I going to live and if I even live three more years five more years ten more years how long can I come to school like this and talk okay I mean I find it increasingly difficult and so wait not for my wife as I said before forget it I wouldn't be here I mean one needs support for this sort of thing and it's not exactly fun to talk about these things I mean when I I know I I'm fully aware that when I started talking about my father my voice started cracking up and that's happened every time because my father and my mom I just wondered the most wonderful people I can think of that were so good to me and so choked up I get it out finally you know at least you know how you feel about them feel about your parents the same way I hope you plan hope it's possible but parents make children what they are it's not just schools if the beginning isn't right chances are that what follow us isn't gonna be right either yeah okay so I was wondering how did you keep moving forward and such rough I don't even know if that's the right word to use but in the environment you were in how did you keep moving for it and keep going in camp or after in camp okay I tell you it it okay I'll rephrase this question because I'm getting it usually after my talks yeah there how do you manage to survive okay that pretty much the same thing okay so I dress myself to that 90% or more pure luck okay you have to accept that I can't tell you anything more than that but the 10% and I made a percentage is obviously sort of my approach I can't prove to you how many percents are there but one other percent is the fact that I spoke fluently German every bit as good German as any of those people that I encountered spoke okay and so when we were building the outer bound for instance in the first camp the Autobahn were these beautiful expressways in Germany that Hitler is responsible for so the Autobahn is appear and their two slopes and these two slopes had to be graded correctly with a with a with that with a great rake rake correctly and then put on their etcetera etcetera so the German goes to a Jew that comes out of somewhere back in Poland who doesn't understand German who has never seen a rake because he spent most of his life studying the Bible or the post-biblical literature the Talmud you know he's a weak person physically I was pleased strong short but you know healthy so he comes to him and says here's a rake ok rake that smoothly so that we can plant grass later on the guy has no idea what side of the rake to use I mean I'm not exaggerating that's how it was and so he takes the rake and starts raking he's making holes in serves going smooth and he uses the wrong side of the rake fall that I know and then he gets slapped and beaten by that guard by that pseudo engineer ok and then he gets injured and that can be the end of his life something as banal and stupid as using a rake can bring about death ok so that's another 5% I'll give you the other 5% maybe it's more than that and that 5% comes from my wife who to whom I of course opened my life when we got married she knows every bit as much about my life as I pretty much so and so I told about my parents and back to my parents and the kind of relationship that my parents offered to me my father was the most patient person with me not necessarily with other people but with me he was patient on Sunday morning we went for a walk every Sunday morning my sister and I on either side of my dad and that was a period for asking questions because my father had given me one of his 2000 books right at the right time when I was able to absorb what was in that book he was wonderful in choosing the literature that he gave us and then he said okay if you don't understand something let's talk about it on Sunday and we walked in through nature and he explained to us and when he didn't know I couldn't know he said I'll find out and he did so my father and my mother gave me identity I knew I was somebody I knew that I was not a piece of trash or a piece of pardon the expression shut because this is what they called us again your piece of why don't you do this why don't you do that they called us to drag against all you day you filthy Jew swine this is how I was addressed okay well that somehow despite my zombie who did not sink on because I knew that I was something better than that and that is due to the relationship that my father and mother offered me I was somebody to myself so that adds up to a hundred percent so how did you overcome the trauma of everything that you experienced well okay it wasn't easy okay it took a long time and I had a hard time overcoming this after I came home to my hometown I mean that situation had completely changed we were given a tiny apartment for five people the four of us and then my cousin who lost her parents and that was a very difficult time I worked in the garage to be an I was an apprentice auto mechanic and then I had a wonderful mechanic master mechanic who knew where I was coming from I remember a man by the name of a sec who taught me a lot of things and actually contributed to my desire which I had had before but now was strengthened to become a mechanical engineer which I became and worked as such for six seven years with John Morris when I came to America I met exclusively good and nice people and that that's just a fact it's other people who make you who you are probably the ninety percent the ten percent maybe was my effort as well my my achievement may be but I went to high school and I had had four years of Grammar School in Europe and was enrolled at Hume for technical and vocational high school in Nashville Tennessee in twelfth grade and I worked day and night with my uncle and aunt with whom I lived for a while and I graduated okay they enrolled me then at Vanderbilt University my my my aunt my uncle's wife took me to the Dean of Vanderbilt engineering school and he said yeah but you have only six credits we can't take you into the engineering curriculum I think 16 were used or needed whatever or she was an excellent extreme extremely good-looking woman and she started flirting with him I was well aware of that and he finally said well mrs. Berger will take him if he passes the first quarter in engineering school he can stay if he doesn't pass the first quarter he's got two back got to go back to high school I passed the first quarter it wasn't brilliant I'll show you it was some B's and some C's didn't make a single deal but I passed and I stayed in engineering school and I graduated four years later again it was not spectacular my grade average but I think was a C+ or something like that enough for General Motors to employ me and there I got in the six years that I was a GM I got five United States patents and I can prove that to you because I still happen and then I switched over to biblical studies and theology went back to graduate school and there I did well and that has been the case more or less anything to this name so I don't know whether that sort of answers your question but it was a I give credit to the people that were kind to me I told Carol Grey Gail the other day the guy who gave me who flunked me in engineering school I took thermodynamics which is a very difficult course a lot of calculus involved I flunked it and that same professor invite me to give a speech in Gainesville Florida to the South East Assembly of the to the Asma the Association of Mechanical Engineers no I mean you know I mean I had a hard time studying with two kids jumping in my bed at 5 o clock in the morning and that dog at at 6:30 and I lived in the living room I mean I did the best I could and I think a good person sees what's in the other person sees the values the potential that's there you don't just turn it off because it doesn't look right or doesn't dressed correctly or is a refugee or is something or another it's the American people are good people I stand by that well we could all be a bit better well who doesn't but but we are good which is how I remember it

Channel: ABTechCC

Views: 11,310

Rating: 4.7473683 out of 5

Keywords: holocaust, author, asheville, college, wwII, world war two

Id: XzorQ888gEc

Length: 117min 8sec (7028 seconds)

Published: Wed Oct 18 2017