The liberator and the liberated

Today is a special day.

Not because of the unique date, although that's pretty cool, especially at 11:11:11 11-11-11.

Today is special because it's Veterans Day.

It's been all over the news this freezing, frosty morning: a sobbing, preschool little girl is surprised in class by her father's return from Afghanistan; a solemn Vietnam veteran with empty shirt sleeves participated in a pre-Veterans Day parade; and Cindy McCain informed me that an average of 18 deaths each day are attributed to war-related PTSD.

But as I thought about Veterans Day this morning, before that first cup of much-needed coffee, before I clicked the remote to hear about today's world events, my thoughts went back five years ago to a charmingly endearing WWII veteran sharing with me his stories of war, meeting Patton and Willie, and how this once-strapping elderly gentleman helped free the prisoners of Dachau.

“Welcome to hell.”

Those were the words spoken to 18-year-old Joe Sacco by a fellow infantryman when they entered the gates of Dachau on May 29, 1945. Fashioned atop the gates was a sign reading “Arbeit Macht Frei” or “Work Makes Free.” Yet it wasn’t work that freed the prisoners of Dachau. It was the American troops.

Joe grew up in Birmingham and lived there until his death a few years ago, more than 60 years after he witnessed the atrocities at Dachau.

“Everywhere I looked, in every direction, I saw dead women, children, old men, babies, beaten, starved, stabbed, shot, butchered, and left to rot on the ground,” he recalls in Where the Birds Never Sing, a book written about his experiences by his son, Jack Sacco.

Holocaust survivor Max Steinmetz, also of Birmingham, spent time at Dachau but wasn’t there when Joe and the 92nd Signal Battalion arrived. He had left weeks earlier on a death march before being liberated by American troops. He realizes that without the American, British, and Russian forces, liberation day might never have arrived.

WW II veteran Joe Sacco and Holocaust survivor Max Steinmetz

Liberation day was the beginning of a return to life for Max. His nightmare began when he was 17 and arrived at Auschwitz with his family after a grueling three-day train ride in the blistering heat of summer.

“We were roughly pulled out of the cattle car and sent to a long line. My mother, father, and five-year-old sister were sent to the left. My brother and I were ordered to the right. We were issued striped prison uniforms with identification numbers. Our head was shaved, and we were sent to the barracks.

A few hours later, I stepped out of the barracks. There was a thick heavy smoke and a nauseating odor that made me physically ill. I asked another prisoner what was happening, and he began to ask me about my arrival. I told him that I had just gotten off the train with my family and that my brother and I had been sent right. The rest of my family had been sent left.”

“That smoke and odor is your family burning,” he explained. “The line to the left goes to the crematorium.”

That was the tortured moment of truth for Max.

More than three million Jews were murdered in gas chambers. New arrivals to the camp were told to hang their clothing on numbered hooks in the undressing room and, as a ploy, were instructed to remember the numbers for later. They were taken into the adjacent gas chamber which was disguised as a large shower. Pellets of the commercial pesticide Zyklon-B were released into the chamber. When the pellets made contact with air, lethal cyanide fumes were released and rose toward the ceiling. Children died first, since they were closer to the floor. Pandemonium erupted as the bitter, almond-like odor spread upward, with adults climbing on top of each other until a tangled heap of dead bodies reached to the ceiling.

Special squads of Jewish slave laborers called Sonderkommandos bore the grim task of untangling victims and removing them from the gas chambers. Next they extracted any gold fillings from the victims’ teeth and searched body orifices for hidden valuables. Clothing, money, jewelry, eyeglasses, and other valuables were sorted and shipped back to Germany for re-use. Corpses were disposed of by various methods including mass burials and cremation, either in open fire pits or in specially designed crematoria such as those used
at Auschwitz.

As Allied troops moved across Europe in a series of offensives on Germany, they began to encounter and liberate concentration camp prisoners, many of whom had survived death marches into the interior of Germany.

Soviet forces were the first to approach a major Nazi camp, reaching the camp of Majdanek near Lublin, Poland, in July 1944. On January 27, 1945, they entered Auschwitz and found hundreds of sick and
exhausted prisoners. The Germans had been forced to leave these prisoners behind in their hasty retreat from the camp. Russian troops also liberated camps at Stutthof, Sachsenhausen, and Ravensbruck.

The liberation process was continued by American, British, Canadian, and French troops. The Americans were responsible for liberating Buchenwald, Dachau, and Mauthausen, while British forces liberated camps in northern Germany, including Bergen-Belsen.

“I met Joe several years ago,” Max shared with me to the background noise of Birmingham's city traffic. “It’s been amazing to hear him talk about that day and how the troops felt when they learned the truth of the Holocaust. And it seemed that a circle had been completed—the Liberator met the Liberated.”

I'm going to salute a veteran today.

I'm going to say thank you, Joe!

And I know Max, and thousands of others will, too.

(Max Steinmetz is one of 20 survivors featured in Darkness into Life: Alabama's Holocaust Survivors Through Photography and Art.)

Max Herzel: Helping the World See

In honor of last week's Yom HaShoah (Holocaust Remembrance Day), 5771, I'd like to introduce you to Max Herzel of Birmingham. He is a Holocaust survivor who was liberated 66 years ago, and is one of 20 survivors featured in Darkness into Life: Alabama's Holocaust Survivors Through Photography and Art.

Max shared his story with me one evening at his inviting home on a shady street in Homewood. It's a story he's told hundreds of times, but his deep emotion drew me in and made me feel he was sharing his amazing story of survival only to me.

Born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1930, his father, Oscar, was a diamond cutter, and his mother, Nachama, a seamstress. Ten-year-old Max’s journey through one of history’s darkest periods began when Belgium was invaded by the Germans on May 10, 1940.

"The city was awakened to the roar of airplanes flying across the sky," he recalled. "By Saturday evening, my parents decided to leave the city, and we nervously waited for sundown. We locked the house and proceeded to the main railroad station to travel to Brussels. Once there, we planned to join my father’s youngest sister and her husband. We took with us more fear than possessions."

After traveling seven days and nights in a crowded boxcar, Max, his parents, and older brother, Harry, found refuge in Southern France.

"This was just the beginning of the longest and saddest journey of my life," he said.

He recalls this as the period when Jews were forced to wear a yellow Star of David outlined in black. In France, “Juif”, the French word for “Jew”, was written inside the star.

Yellow Star by Becky Seitel

For centuries, the Star of David has been a symbol of Jewish pride. But during World War II, Nazis used the star to segregate and terrorize the Jewish people.

“The German government’s policy of forcing Jews to wear a badge was a tactic aimed at isolating us from the rest of the population,” he explained. “It enabled the German government to identify, deprive, starve, and ultimately murder Jewish people.”

Inside concentration camps, triangular patches were used to identify prisoners. The patches included:

• Jew—yellow
• Gypsy—brown
• Homosexual—pink
• Asocial—black
• Political prisoner—red

The Asocial category was the most diverse, including prostitutes, vagrants, murderers, thieves, lesbians, and those who violated laws prohibiting sexual intercourse between Aryans and Jews. The word “Blod” on a black triangle marked mentally retarded inmates. For Jewish offenders, triangles of two different colors were combined to create a six-pointed star, one triangle yellow to denote a Jew, the second triangle another color to denote the added offense.

Within a few weeks of the family's arrival in Southern France, the men were forced into labor battalions. Determined to arrange his family’s escape, Oscar used bribery to flee to Marseilles. He and Harry were ultimately caught by the French police in late 1942 and were sent to a work camp. Upon their release, Harry joined the French Underground and Oscar went into hiding.

"My mother became desperate and went down to the river attempting suicide by jumping off the bridge," Max says as you can literally see his memory take him back to late 1942. "She was taken to a local hospital and then transferred to St. Marie, a Catholic psychiatric hospital. I offer thanks to Dr. Pierre Doussinet, a righteous gentile, who kept her in the hospital after treatment. Had she been released, she would surely have been arrested by the French police and sent to a concentration camp."

Even though the punishment would be death, many Gentiles saved Jews during the Holocaust. They were people who decided to make a difference because it was the right thing to do.

Young Max and his family were aided during and after the war by Mrs. Decoux, a wealthy Parisian Gentile. Her first name has long been forgotten. When Max’s father could no longer hide in her basement, Mrs. Decoux helped him hide in the forest and brought him food until he was captured while attempting to escape to the Italian zone.

“My father wrote this letter to Madame Decoux,” Max says of the letter translated below. “It was censored, as you can see by the censorship stamp, so we’ve never been able to determine exactly where he was."

Letter From My Father by Becky Seitel

February 19, 1944

Dear Mrs. Decoux,

I am writing you a few words from Italy. I’m able to tell you that I’m in good health. I’m also hoping the same by you and by Mrs. Churbard. I don’t know exactly where my wife is at the present time, also Harry and Max. Be kind and transmit this letter. Do not worry about me. I have much hope we will see each other soon. I’m positive that with my friend Mazaloigne and the rest of my friends everything is well. Wishing everyone well. From a friend who is thinking often of you.
 
Oscar

"We later learned that he was captured and taken to Auschwitz, and then Buchenwald, where he died on February 26, 1945, approximately three months short of liberation. He was only 44. Also lost were his family of seven siblings and their children, as well as thirteen of my mother’s family."

All alone during this time, young Max was sent to a series of four orphanages. When these became too dangerous, an underground Jewish agency, OSE (Oeuvre de Secours aux Enfants) placed him on a remote farm in Sironne in the French Alps. Posing as a Catholic orphan, he worked for his food and lodging. After the Allies regained France in 1944, all the hidden children were gathered by the OSE in an effort to reunite them with their families.

"I was finally reunited with my mother and brother in Clermont-Ferrand where she had been living in the hospital. We learned that we were the only three survivors from the Salomon and Herzel families. We located my mother’s brother and sister in New York, and they sponsored my brother and me to come to America. We arrived on December 23, 1948. My mother joined us five years later."

The patriotic new American served four years in the U.S. Air Force, and in 1955, married Cecille Herman. The family was completed with the birth of two children, the ultimate gift to a young man who had lost so much family to the evil acts of Adolf Hitler.

Job opportunities brought Max to Birmingham where he was an executive with the Veterans Administration Medical Center. Today, he is an active member of the Alabama Holocaust Commission and the Birmingham Holocaust Education Center. He devotes countless hours each month sharing his story with junior and high school students throughout Alabama, keeping the history of the Holocaust alive, spreading the message of the death and destruction caused by hatred and bigotry.

Another passion is Lions Clubs International, the world’s largest service organization, recognized for its service to the blind and visually impaired. He is actively involved as a Lion and is District Governor of Alabama District 34-O. He was named a Melvin Jones Fellow, the Lions’ highest form of recognition for an individual’s dedication to humanitarian service in his community and in the world community.

Helping the World See by Becky Seitel

"I especially enjoy being a part of our project to recycle used eyeglasses,” says Max who helps collect glasses and delivers them to the recycling center to be sorted and sent on vision missions to Latin America.

The many pairs of glasses surrounding Max each day are a fraction of those that were stripped from Jews entering concentration camps and sent to “Aryan” Germans. Former First Lady Laura Bush, in a talk at the 10th Anniversary of the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., recalled seeing a mountain of such glasses.

“What moved me the most were the thousands of eyeglasses, their lenses still smudged with tears and dirt," she said. "It struck me how vulnerable we are as humans, how many needed those glasses to see, and how many people living around the camps and around the world refused to see. We see today, we know what happened, and we will never forget.”

An Adventurer

In my continued series, Darkness into Life: Alabama's Holocaust Survivors Through Photography and Art, I'd like to introduce you to Stan Minkinow of Huntsville.

I met Stan one hot Saturday afternoon after a pleasant drive to Huntsville. The home he shares with his wife, Doris, is beautifully decorated with enchanting art. Stan is an avid art collector and can tell you exactly where on his worldly travels he lovingly purchased each piece. He is strikingly tall and has the posture that comes with being a life-long member of the Army. I was immediately drawn to hear the story of this Green Beret and retired Army Major.

In January 1942, when Stan was ten years old, he and his parents were forced to become residents of the Lodz Ghetto in Poland.

Approximately 160,000 Jews, more than a third of the city’s population, were forced into the ghetto, the second largest in the Polish-occupied territory. Barbed-wire fencing isolated the ghetto from the rest of the city. Using Jewish residents for forced labor, the Lodz Ghetto soon became a major Nazi production center. Living conditions were horrendous. Lack of running water and sewer systems, along with overcrowding, hard labor, and starvation, reduced the ghetto by more than 20 percent.

“Even before we were sent to the ghetto, I began to adapt,” he shares. “Jewish children weren’t allowed to attend school, so boredom and curiosity tempted me out onto the streets.” Those streets became his classroom where he witnessed the unusual becoming the ordinary. From carts carrying corpses to finely dressed people pocketing rotten potatoes, he watched as the daily events of his life changed.

“I stood on the street corner near my grandparents’ apartment and watched as Jews filed through the gate,” he recalls. “I saw young people, old people, some pushing baby carriages, some arriving on foot or by horse-drawn taxis, others getting out of fancy cars.” 

Inside the Lodz Ghetto, the living quarters for his family consisted of one room with a stove, one bed for his parents, and one couch where young Stan slept. Food was scarce; their main staple was yellow beets; even their bread was made from beets. The family considered it a feast when they were able to acquire horse meat. “At night I often thought, ‘I hope I wake up as a German tomorrow so that I will have enough to eat.’ ”

Stan and his parents bribed their way from the Lodz Ghetto to the Warsaw Ghetto. Less than a year later, his family made another daring escape, this time from the Warsaw Ghetto. Without even a suitcase, they approached the gate guarded by three policemen: one Jewish; one Polish; and the third, German. Stan’s father showed the German his passport, while his mother showed the Pole a booklet with cash inside. The family fled to the village of Radość, outside Warsaw, renting an apartment using their maid’s last name and living as Poles.

“If the Polish officer had been doing his job, he would have shot us,” he says.

After the Russians liberated Poland, Stan’s father was arrested for his involvement with the Polish government in exile. After a year, in yet another escape, Stan’s mother bribed a Polish guard to take her husband to Berlin. Stan recalls hearing gun shots as he and his mother were smuggled across the border sometime later. For a short time after the war, the family lived in a displaced persons camp in Berlin. Stan learned that his grandfather, Hein, had died at Auschwitz.

Not surprisingly, what started in the ghetto with a young boy’s curiosity and thirst for adventure played out in Stan’s life. In 1951, he saw a U.S. Army recruiting film in Munich. He enlisted and became a member of the elite, newly-created Special Forces, later becoming an American Cold Warrior and a Green Beret. He completed Officer Candidate School and was commissioned as a Second Lieutenant in the Infantry. A tour of duty in Korea was followed by two tours in Vietnam. Among his numerous medals are the Distinguished Flying Cross, Bronze Star, and the Air Medal. He retired as a Major in 1979.

“I am what you would call an adventurer,” he says with a smile.

Out of the dark

In my continued series, Darkness into Life: Alabama's Holocaust Survivors Through Photography and Art, meet Riva Hirch and read her compelling story:

When little girls are ten years old, they should be playing with dolls or hosting tea parties.

When Riva Hirsch was ten years old, she was hidden by nuns in a bunker near a convent in Ukraine. Fearful of frequent visits by the SS soldiers, the nuns were only able to visit the bunker every two or three days to leave food and water.

Out of the Dark by Becky Seitel

“When the door was cracked, it was my lifeline. The door separated me from the outside world. Inside that bunker, my life was lonely and frightening,” she recalls.

So fearful were the nuns of being discovered, they often simply cracked the door and hurriedly threw in the food.

“I was living among rats. If I was fast enough to get to the food before the rats ran away with it, I ate. If I was too slow, I was forced to exist on lice. They were all over me. At times, I could hardly open my eyes or my mouth. Swallowing lice helped keep me alive. They were my breakfast, lunch, and dinner.”

Riva existed in this dark isolation for two years.

“I don’t know how time passed. Day was night and night was day. I felt more dead than alive. But even though I didn’t have even the simple basics of life like other little girls, I was safe.”

“In 1945, the door of the bunker opened wide. It had not been open more than a crack for two years.

“The nuns wrapped my frost-bitten feet in cloth and draped a blanket over my shoulders. I was suffering from malaria and typhus. My vision was impaired and my teeth had fallen out.

“A voice spoke in a language I didn’t understand. I later learned the Russian Army had liberated me.

“A hand pushed me forward. I moved toward the light, and with small footsteps, left the bunker in Tulchin, Ukraine.

“I was 12 years old.”

Like many children of the Holocaust, Riva was robbed of her childhood more than six decades ago by Adolph Hitler.

Today, she spends time working with the Elks Lodge of Mountain Brook to help promote the education and social development of Alabama’s youth.

Riva is well-known throughout the state for her dedication to raising money for the Elks Youth Camp. Located on Lake Martin in Tallassee, Alabama, the Elks Youth Camp offers activities and programs for young people between ages eight and thirteen. The youngsters receive an opportunity to experience different surroundings while learning valuable lessons about life. The programs are designed to help build character while showing how important it is to work with others.

Building Better Kids by Becky Seitel

In 2006, Riva single-handedly sold more Cadillac raffle tickets than any other Alabama member. This was just one of the reasons she was named Alabama Elk of the Year, becoming the first woman to receive that honor in the history of the Mountain Brook Lodge.

“Since we came to America in 1962, people have been wonderful to my husband and me,” Riva says. “Being a part of the Elks Association gives me an opportunity to give something back to this country by giving our youth such a great opportunity to build character… and have fun!”

Riva's husband, Aisic, is also a Holocaust survivor.

When she talks about the terror she experienced in Ukraine, he understands more than anyone. That’s because he experienced circumstances very similar to Riva’s, almost 1,000 miles away in Poland.

Riva and Aisic Hirsch married in Haifa in 1950, five years after they were liberated by Russian troops.

“We both went to Palestine after the war, and it was there that I met my beshert, a Yiddish word that means perfect match, soul mate, destiny,” Riva explains.

Beshert by Becky Seitel

“I was a police officer and often ate at a local café. Riva was a waitress there, just 16, and the most beautiful girl I had ever seen,” says Aisic.

Through the years, they’ve shared much more than the painful story of their past. They’ve shared many happy family times, always observing and celebrating their Jewish faith and heritage, a faith and heritage that made them a target of murder by the Nazis and then brought them together in Palestine.

Friday Night by Becky Seitel

How I became involved in an Alabama holocaust survivors' exhibit

In my recent post, "You didn't know Jack," I noted I would share how I became involved in "Darkness into Life: Alabama's Holocaust Survivors Through Photography and Art."

In early 2005, my husband, Alan, and I were looking for a community project that would share our common interests. Alan is Jewish, I am Christian, and before we were married, we committed to being supportive of each other’s religion. But since we don’t worship together, we felt a desire to do something as a couple that would allow us to share a mutually-rewarding experience outside traditional spiritual settings.

I had recently re-discovered photography, so right away we had our method, but we talked for months about the message. We discussed current issues: breast cancer, AIDS, homelessness, and organ donation since Alan’s son had recently undergone a successful liver transplant.

But when we attended a local Holocaust Memorial Service and heard the first-hand accounts of the Holocaust, our message became clear. I had never met a Holocaust survivor, and had certainly never heard a first-hand account of that horrible time in history. I realized our grandchildren would be unlikely to hear these personal stories since many survivors are now in their 80’s and 90’s. As we walked to the car in stunned silence, I looked at Alan and said, “I think we found our project.”

Additional weeks of discussion followed. Alan felt that we had to do something different from other Holocaust exhibits. We talked about the photographs we would shoot, how many (perhaps ten), and where we would exhibit, but we knew there was something missing in our plan.

During this time, we attended an art exhibit by Mitzi J. Levin, and discovered the missing piece. We invited Mitzi to join us and paint the memories of the survivors: their childhood, imprisonment or hiding, and liberation. My photographs would capture them in the present and the result would be the stories of the lives of Birmingham’s Holocaust survivors – how they prevented Hitler from winning by living happy, successful lives, how they traveled from "Darkness into Life."

Our initial exhibit at Birmingham’s Levite Jewish Community Center on April 1, 2007, drew 1,700 people on opening day. Staff members from the Birmingham Civil Rights Institute visited the exhibit and invited us to show at the Institute. They also asked us to expand the exhibit to include all of Alabama.

Birmingham's Holocaust Survivors: (l-r) Ruth Siegler, Max Steinmetz,
Ilse Nathan, Jack Bass (deceased), Henry Aizenman (deceased), Aisic Hirsch,
Martin Aaron, Riva Hirsch, and Max Steinmetz

The idea of ten photographs grew into a 78-piece exhibit that has been donated to the Birmingham Holocaust Education Committee to help teach junior and senior high school students about the Holocaust, genocide, and bigotry. And most importantly, to join together and say “Never Again!"

Survivor Martin Aaron (back, middle) and Mortimer Jordan high school students

I am proud to be part of this project and to have been entrusted with the inspiring stories of 20 people who became my friends and mentors. I am so thankful for knowing them and deeply miss the three survivors who are no longer with us.

"Darkness into Life" currently travels to high schools, colleges, and community centers in Alabama and is booked almost two years in advance. For more information, contact Barbara Solomon.

Over the next few months, I'll continue to share Alabama's holocaust survivors stories of survival and determination.

You didn't know Jack

I loved Jack Bass. He's gone now. But I still love him.

I didn't want to. Love him, that is. But I fell, just like anyone who met him, heard him speak, and became captivated by his intelligence, wit, and charm.

I didn't want to love him because of his advanced age and poor health. I knew he was somewhat living on borrowed time and I never was very good with that whole better to have loved and lost thing. He had a severe heart condition that had almost claimed him some years back. I knew it would come knocking for him again soon.

Love him? No way. He was often rude and frequently crude. He could tell an off-color joke almost better than Robin Williams and Lewis Black. But I could never help laughing. He was always on, always happy. If you spent 15 minutes with Jack, you’d be entertained by Truman Capote, Winston Churchill, and Ronald Reagan. “I inherited my sense of humor from my grandfather," he told me. "Of course, it disappeared when I was at Auschwitz. I became numb there….no anger, no pain, no feeling at all. It was difficult to focus on anything. I was just trying to live another hour.”

Jack as Truman Capote

But most of all, I didn't want to love him and have his pain become my pain. Knowing that someone I loved had suffered the atrocities of the Holocaust kept me awake at night. It still does.

Jack Bass was born Jurgen Jakob Bassfreund in 1923 in Berncastle, Germany, ten years before the monster Adolph Hitler came to power. He was eight years old when he began to suffer name-calling by his classmates and was required by his teacher to recite a demeaning passage from the poem The Tree Which Wanted to Change Its Leaves by Friedrich Ruchert. Each time the poem was read, Jack was called forward to tell the story of a bearded Jew who stole the golden leaves from a beautiful tree in the forest. He never forgot the feelings that came with those recitations. When I first met him, he could still recite that poem from memory, his German accent heavy, his ocean-blue eyes watery and morose.

Following his father’s death in 1932, Jack, his sister, and his mother moved to Trier, then Cologne, and finally to Berlin, each time moving to a larger city in an effort to remain anonymous. Jack’s mother remarried and recognizing the bleak future, his step-father left for the U.S. in 1938 to arrange the family’s emigration. During Kristallnacht in Berlin, Jack was almost killed in the glass-covered streets. His step-father did not return to Germany.

In mid-1942, Joseph Goebbels, Reich Minister of Enlightenment and Propaganda, promised to make Berlin “Judenrein” (free of Jews) by Hitler’s birthday. Jack and his mother were arrested that year and separated during deportation. He was sent by railroad cattle car to Auschwitz; she was sent to her death.

Because he was young and strong, Jack was selected for slave labor in five different camps: Auschwitz III (Buna or Monowitz), Auschwitz I, Dachau, Gross-Rosen, and Mühldorf. Each move was hastened by the approaching Russian forces. Jack worked building factories and sorting human hair to be used in the manufacture of mattresses.

Jack's stories were so difficult to hear, especially this story I put together five years ago about 'running to the fence.'

“Stop! High Voltage!” 

Unfortunately, this warning was not enough to prevent prisoners from committing suicide on the electric fence surrounding the concentration camp. Jack Bass recalled that the thought of suicide was entertained by almost everyone, if only for a brief time. It was born from the helplessness of the harsh environment, the hunger, the disease, the fear of the unknown. 

“Many people ended it all because the suffering was too great,” he said. “They chose what we called ‘running to the fence.’ They would fling themselves on the fence and die immediately as the electricity ran through their bodies. They would hang there until the current was turned off the next day. In yet one more act of cruelty by the Nazis, their bodies would remain on the ground for days. 

“After a while, I became numb to that painful sight of death, at least during the day. But during my nightly walk to the outhouse, I had to turn away. The nights were always cold and foggy. The gloom that settled over me was intensified by a lifeless form stuck to the electric fence.”

"Haunting Memories"

One thing that helped Jack survive the camps was his love of music and the songs he silently hummed to himself everyday. I called him 'The Music Maven.' If you visited him at home, you would think you'd just entered a music library. Classical music was always playing softly in the background; ivory busts of Beethoven, Liszt, Chopin, and Paderevski sat quietly on the bookcase; and almost 1,000 pieces of music filled every nook and cranny.

The Germans also recognized the power of music. At each of the extermination camps, the Nazis created orchestras of prisoner-musicians. Auschwitz, for example, had six orchestras, one of which contained more than 100 musicians. “The musician’s job was to motivate fellow prisoners by playing as they marched to and from work each day,” Jack told me. “I remember hearing The Merry Widow as I marched to my job of building an airport.” Sadly, many musicians were also forced to play and watch helplessly as their friends and families were led to the gas chambers. It’s no surprise that the suicide rate among musicians was higher than that of most other camp workers.

Jack was near death on May 8, 1945, when the American GI’s took over the Mühldorf camp in Germany and sent him to a makeshift hospital in Ampfing, Germany.

“I waited to be taken to the large Red Cross van, but noticed through the window that the van was too full to carry all of us, and I watched it pull away," he shared with me. "After all I had been through, I was left behind. Thankfully, the van returned for me the next day and took me from that horrible place to my freedom. I was twenty-two years old and weighed only sixty pounds."

Always the comedian, Jack even managed to turn that horrid description of himself into humor. Years later, one of his favorite quips was directed to doubters of the Holocaust: “If the Holocaust didn’t happen, I went through one hell of a weight loss program for nothing."

Probably by now, you're wondering, "After all that happened, how did Jack manage to be so happy, telling jokes and impersonations at every opportunity?" I wondered that, too, so one day I posed that question to him.

"If I wasn't happy," he said with a twinkle in his eye, "Hitler would have won. And I'm not going to let that happen.

Jack died this year. I visited him in the hospital intensive care unit, a room so full of machines and tubes, I almost had to play hopscotch to get to his bedside. When I gently touched 706332 tattooed on arm, he opened his eyes, and with his face and hands barely moving, he began to impersonate Truman Capote. He was making me laugh even as he was dying.

I loved Jack Bass. He's gone now. But I still love him.

(I met Jack through my involvement in "Darkness into Life: Alabama's Holocaust Survivors through Photography and Art." I'll share the history of the exhibit with you next week.)