MY HOLOCAUST STORY
My father was married before marrying my mother. He had a daughter with his previous wife, she was 17 years older than I. She was married to a man, 17 years older than her, STEVEN LEWKOWICZ, Auschwitz #124171, Buchenwald #128923. When I was 7, my family was invited to their house for dinner on a very hot summer day. It was the first time I saw him in a short sleeve shirt. I asked what those numbers were, he said, my phone number. I believed him.
I was the kind of kid that would fulfill any request I could, but I never took orders or disrespectful tones. Our class had to meet in the library. Mrs. Robinson entered and screamed, get a book, and sit down and read. Everybody did but me. She came over grabbed me by the ear, dragged me down an aisle and said grab a book. I did, she dragged me to my seat and said read. It was a photo book of the liberation. I saw the numbers and understood Steve's numbers, I devoured it, and my journey began.
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I have been studying the Holocaust since I was 12. I have been to several Holocaust museums and have one in my home, I conducted many survivor interviews. It has been my life. I have never felt it, except once. In 1999, I had an unquenchable thirst. I found out I had diabetes, I kept trying to quench my thirst with chocolate milk and orange juice, a few gallons, until I was hospitalized. The only time I could feel anything they felt. Unquenchable thirst.
The most important thing about teaching, any subject, any language, any age group, is to teach the facts, if not, you just spread misinformation. Once upon a time, a long time ago, Cantor Borman at our synagogue in Sylvania, Ohio, came out to my car when I was picking up my kids and said, “Would you like to teach the Holocaust to 7th graders, 2 different classes per Sunday?” I said, “Yes” and the journey began. For 7 years I taught the Holocaust to 7th graders, with one goal in mind, reach one child that would grow up prejudiced, and change them to be a loving, tolerant, inclusive, human being that celebrated human differences, instead of abhorring them. If they taught their children, then maybe in 1000 generations we would live in peace. I wanted to be, and was, a person that helped change the world. I taught them the same as I would teach adults, and 4 years into it, 2 girls I had as students I had 2 years before, stopped me in the synagogue hall and said, “Mr. Ziegler, we wanted to thank you for making us better human beings.” I smiled and thanked them and said to myself, “the ball is now rolling.” Now, how many 12-year-olds, want to go to Sunday School, instead of the mall? I had 100% attendance every week, except if one was ill. I used bait! All kids want money. I asked a $1 question, a 50-cent question, and a quarter question. If they were not in the class the week before, they would not know the answer. When I explained what took place inside the gas chamber during a gassing, they all listened intently. The next week, the $1 question was, describe a gassing. Every hand went up, the first hand up answered, and answered 100% correctly.
Once I was asked by the cantor to teach a 4-week adult ed Holocaust class. We lived in a Toledo, Ohio, suburb, and the classes were in January, snow, and ice, and cold everywhere. The first class about 10 congregation members and 2 Survivors attended. The second class about 5 members and 6 Survivors attended. The 3rd class was 2 members and 9 Survivors. The 4th class was 15 Survivors, some I had interviewed, some I had never met. I got up to start the 4th class and saw it was all survivors and I said, “I am the student, trying to teach the teachers. You people lived it. I have no business up here.” And one of the Survivors stood up and said, “No Albert, we each lived our own Holocaust experience, but most of us have never studied it. You are the teacher.” Everyone stood up and applauded, and I broke down in tears. Someone said, “We have had enough tears, teach.” I completed the class, got hugged and kissed by everyone and went home.
I once worked in an appliance store and the assistant's father was an Auschwitz survivor. Between customers, I always had a Holocaust book in my hand. The first time I met the father, I was holding a book titled, Auschwitz. He saw it and said, I was there, one of the youngest liberated. I said, I know, your son told me your story. He said, my son doesn't know my story. He started coming in, whether his son was working or not, and started telling me his story. He started bringing in other survivors, and if I was with customers, they would wait. 2-3 days a week it was a survivor gathering. At his son's bachelor party, while everyone else was watching strippers, the father and I, and 5 other survivors sat in a corner and shared life stories.
I was invited to give Holocaust talks at Churches, Schools, Senior Citizen homes, and social organizations like at the VFW hall. I also put together the first Yom Hashoah service at the synagogue in the high desert area of Southern California, it was a full house with a crowd at the door. It was in the paper and was attended by both Jews and people of other faiths.
I always wanted to take a Holocaust class, but there weren’t any. My second wife, Apryl, sent me back to college. I was always a debater, lol. I felt my job, as the oldest student in the class, 50+, was to catch a teacher’s error, stand up, yell, WRONG, tell them where they were incorrect, have the teacher apologize to the class for misinforming them, and then have them teach it correctly. Every teacher hated me at first, but loved me by the end, and often had me co-teach, I even got a lecture hall once, my wife took pictures, one will be up on here with this post. Most students in the class were between 18-25, they are going to believe what the professor said, and pass on misinformation the rest of their lives. A teacher I had for a class, finally offered a Holocaust class, at 8am, and on the first day, stated, “This class is going to be co-taught by one of your fellow students because of knowledge in this subject. I drove 75 miles each way to school every day.
I conducted 17 Holocaust survivor and 1 liberator interview in the 90s, most interviews were 2 hours or less. This is the story of one, MARIAN WOJCIECHOWSKI, Auschwitz #50333, his interview took a few visits and ended up being 16 HOURS AND 7 MINUTES, and after said, “I am sorry we didn’t have time for details.” The first time I met him, he was in his early 80s, his daughter, a miracle child, born of a female Ravensbruck sterilization experiment survivor, had to get him from his field, he was up in a ladder pruning apple trees. He was a Polish Catholic that helped supply 6 underground organizations, including, ZEGOTA, (Zegota was the Polish Council to Aid Jews with the Government Delegation for Poland, an underground Polish resistance organization.) with food, weapons, documents, and other supplies, and was sent to Auschwitz with a death sentence. To make a long story short, we became friends. He asked me to accompany him, in 1995, to the 50-year anniversary Polish Catholic mass in Doylestown, Pennsylvania, from Toledo, Ohio. No driving, just keep him company. He told me stories from morning when we left until way after dark when we got there. We were in the sticks with no reservations anywhere. We stayed in this flea bag hotel, the only thing around. When I entered the room, he stayed at the door and said, “My accommodations at Auschwitz were better than this.”
I put together the first Yom Hashoah service at the synagogue in the high desert area of Southern California, it was a full house with a crowd at the door. It was in the paper and was attended by both Jews and people of other faiths.