On The Move

I just returned from spending five days at an International Holocaust Studies Conference hosted by Middle Tennessee State University in Murfreesboro, Tennessee, a town most people have never heard of. A town that I will never forget.

The event gathered hundreds of educators from around the globe for a single purpose: How to improve Holocaust education. The meeting sessions covered a wide range of topics, from "Crimes Behind The Front Lines" to "Portraying the Holocaust In Word And Image." But none were more important or meaningful to me than "Survivors and Liberators", a panel discussion that I participated in.

The panel consisted of four survivors and two liberators. The two liberators spoke first, Jimmy Gentry and James Dorris, both from Tennessee. The two gentlemen spoke of the atrocities they witnessed when they liberated Dachau. They told us about the Death Train and the more than 2,000 emaciated skeletons who were shuttled around for weeks on a trip from Buchenwald to Dachau without food or water. They spoke about the thousands of dead bodies and the few survivors that they were able to rescue.

These were all stories that I knew too well. I was one of those fortunate "walking skeletons" and had emerged from those trains barely alive just three days prior to liberation. These men were my liberators. These were the men who rescued me from Dachau.

I was to speak next, but could not do it until I embraced and thanked them both for giving me life and saving my life. At the time of liberation I weighed only 65 pounds and was already 99% dead. Without them, I doubt that I would have lasted another day.

Just imagine having your life saved and never having had the chance to say thank you. Then suddenly and unexpectedly more than 60 years later, meeting the people who saved you. If you can imagine that, you can imagine how I felt. Overwhelmed and overcome with gratitude. There are no words that can accurately express how I felt.

At that moment I felt particularly proud that I have dedicated so much of my life to the cause of remembrance. I was proud that we had started our Zachor Foundation and to be able to hand out our zachor pins to this worthy group in attendance. They all seemed to agree that distributing these pins to students and listeners makes a difference and a lasting impression.

To quote my good friend Gina Klonoff, "So that the six million innocent Jewish men, women and children, viciously murdered, will not have died in vain, the zachor pin must become a potent warning against the evil and hatred which might yet reappear long after no eyewitnesses are left to warn the world with their reports. Zachor."

We must always remember and never forget.

To learn more about the programs that the Middle Tennessee State University visit http://www.mtsu.edu/holocaust_studies/.