Holocaust survivor reveals how he was beaten and starved at Nazi camps
Beaten, starved until his bones were sticking out of his flesh and his teeth rotten, sodomized by Nazi soldiers – Dachau survivor tells how he found hope in Hitler's death camps
As a young child in Nazi-occupied Poland in 1939, Szmulek Rozental was terrified when he heard the rumbling sound of trucks bringing in twenty soldiers in yellow uniforms sitting with rifles between their knees.
They stopped, spread blankets on the ground, and with the help of local policemen, demanded all valuables be surrendered and placed on the blankets.
The soldiers set the beards and collars of the Hassidic men on fire engulfing their faces in flames, threw one woman in a chair out of a window and used a lock cutter to cut of a man's nose.
All of the Polish Jews would be sent to labor camps.
Szmulek spent the next six years struggling to survive inhumane conditions in ten concentration death camps including the notorious Auschwitz-Birkenau and Dachau.
He was brutally beaten, starved until his bones were sticking out of his flesh and his teeth rotten. He was sodomized by Nazi soldiers and forced to perform oral sex daily.
Now 89 years old, the Holocaust survivor has written of his time in Nazi Camps in his new book, From Broken Glass: My Story of Finding Hope in Hitler's Death Camps to Inspire a New Generation, published by Hachette Books.
Sometimes, I would do anything to forget. I want so badly to forget that it makes me cry. I wish for just one day, for one hour, or even a single moment, I could be free of the memories,' the author, who was renamed Steve Ross when he emigrated to the United States, writes in his book.
He adds: 'The refrain Never forget sometimes sounds to me like my curse.
'People say the phrase all the time: Never forget... We want future generations of people all over the world to understand the powers of hate... to not let any one group of people be blamed for the wrongs of the world.'
Ross realized that after getting a college education and working as a licensed psychologist for the Boston school system for 40 years motivating neglected kids to stay off the street and in school, he still had to do more.
Talking about the horrors he lived through wasn't enough.
He conceived of and spearheaded the campaign to build the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston in 1995 along Boston's Freedom Trail.
Now, the memorial is a constant reminder that 'We must never let it happen again'.
Ross was orphaned by the Holocaust and witnessed cruelties beyond the imagination.
Before being captured by Nazis, then-nine-year-old Szmulek and his family tried to arrange for a farmer to take them to the Russian border
As they traveled through Poland, they had to move on quickly - townspeople were afraid of the repercussions of helping a Jew.
There was talk that the Germans were building labor camps where they intended to work the Jews like slaves building guns, trucks and bombs.
At the same time, German soldiers prodded hundreds of people to the train station in Krasnik, Poland, pushing them along with their guns, boots and fists.
The family took refuge in an abandoned building and the following morning,
Szmulek's parents walked him outside the village to where they had seen a farm couple with two sons plowing.
'Please. The Germans will come for us soon. Let my boy stay here,' Szmulek's mother begged, and the husband agreed to take him in.
The miserable vicious bastards take what they want anyway. Hiding Jews or not,' the author recalled the man saying.
'You'll be safe now. We will find each other someday. I promise,' his mother said - but the young boy knew he would never see her again.
He slept in the farmer's barn and grew close to one son, Wladek, who hid with him under the pig trough when the Germans came.
But the Germans started coming more frequently, collecting money, food and clothing, looking through the house, barn and fields for anything of value or to confiscate. Continue reading
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