THE HOLOCAUST: ART, ARTIFACTS, BOOKS, MOVIES, NEWS, AND TESTIMONIES
We try very hard to be respectful of everyone's opinions. My wife and I have a Holocaust Museum/Memorial in our home, that in my humble opinion, has a better collection then most universities in the country and most personal, in home, Holocaust Museum/Memorials in the world. We have an incredible collection of Holocaust books, movies, magazines and newspapers, most of which, the publishers are no longer in business, a collection of newspaper articles from the 60s-90s, Holocaust artifacts, Holocaust art, most of which I created, 2 books I am written about in, and a copy of the Congressional Record, that I am written about in, and 17 monthly issues of the Toledo Jewish News that published my Holocaust articles, I honor the memory of the victims and the survivors every minute of every day of my life. My brother in-law, Steven Lewkowicz, survived Birkenau, #124171, and Buchenwald, #128923, on my arm, tattooed, it says, IN MEMORY OF, with a yellow triangle pointing down with one of his numbers on each side of it. I feel I honor the Victims and Survivors’ memories respectfully 24 hours a day, 7 days a week. I am no expert scholar, on anything. I just have an interest in the Holocaust, and have read some stuff, written some stuff, collected some stuff, and created some stuff, that I like to share, since I now am retired.
Stanley and Alina Czech, I had talked to them both about me being allowed to interview them but kept getting put off. On June 8, 1993, I got a phone call from Stanley. He said, “You need to interview me today. I called someone to cover my work shift and went over and conducted the interview, it was hard for him to relive his memories. I finished and went home, but several hours later, I got a call. Stanley had a stroke and was in the hospital. I went right there, his eyes acknowledged my presence, I held his hand and talked with him, with some of his family in the room. Whenever I conducted an interview, I had the original, made a copy for each of the survivors’ children and spouse, and one for the synagogue Holocaust room. That night he died. I was invited to the funeral and as I sat there listening to his family give his eulogy, I was crying, because I felt I caused his death, I murdered him by pressing too hard for details. I had met one of their daughters, a nun. All of them spoke about him in the eulogy, the nun thanked me for giving them his story, which none of them had ever heard before. I stopped doing interviews. When I went to drop the copies off at Alina’s, I told her I had stopped and how guilty I felt. She said, “Albert, he knew it was the end, that is why he called you.” On October 29, 1994, I got a call from Alina, and she said, “You need to interview me today.” I did, later that night she had a stroke in her throat and could never speak another word. She willed me the blanket she wore on the death march from Auschwitz to Bergen-Belsen in January 1945, after her passing. We have her blanket, in a wooden display case, from my friend and Holocaust Survivor, that I interviewed, Alina Czech.
