- The Germans grabbed my arm.
I had to make a fist.
The slammed the arm onto a table,
and with a hypodermic needle,
every little dot was injected until it became in my case,
the number B-7648.
In the middle of the night, they kicked down the door.
They were yelling and screaming.
My mom and dad were at a loss.
They grabbed me to protect me,
especially from the German Shepherds
which were pretty much at my level.
They took us out on the truck.
I, of course, was scared.
I was confused.
I had no way of doing anything to escape.
We were taken off and were greeted by people
who had an emaciated, hollow look.
They really moved like zombies.
My father was forced to work
repairing the electrified fences.
My mother made iron plates
that went under the military boots.
I miraculously was given the chance
to work in the agriculture department.
The food ration that you received
was a single loaf of bread,
a watery cabbage soup, intentionally non-nutritional.
That was your total food for the week.
As far as I was concerned,
I had an escape mechanism from that level of starvation,
by stealing food as much as I could.
The way I stole it was by putting holes in my pocket,
let the seeds fall down to by ankles
where the pant leg had been tightened up.
I was able to pass inspection by being patted down.
Had I been detected, I would have become
what the Germans called "Sunday's entertainment",
the execution by hanging.
One of the saddest moments in the ghetto
was that when my dad came home,
laid down, since there was no furniture,
and simply expired.
The sidewalk would be littered
by the corpses of those
that had passed away the night before.
And they had a wagon pulled by two or three people,
come and collect the corpses.
That to me was more painful
than seeing my dad give up his life or pass away,
what will be done to him after he passed.
When I went to work the next morning,
I did see him laying naked,
waiting to be picked up by this wagon,
taking him to a grave
where already several people had been buried,
and plop, he'll fall down into a heap of bodies.
That was painful.
One Nazi dragged my mom away
and said, "You belong over there on the other side."
I didn't call, "Mommy," or anything like this.
There was no time to do this.
I realized very quickly, to see my mother again
is not ever, ever going to happen.
They shaved our hair,
they pushed us through an archway
and doused us with a painful liquid.
We were washed for about 10 seconds,
and I pushed against a large building.
There was a huge smoke stack, and an enormous flame,
and the most obnoxious odor
that we could not recognize.
We were packed in with the density of standing room only.
You could hardly move.
We hear a noise and realize that looking up,
two airplanes were circling the train.
They had circular insignias,
predominantly French fighter planes,
and also accompanied by British fighter planes.
They misrecognized and designated
us apparently, returning German military.
And it was my good fortune to be
at the very front of the wagon
and not be in the trajectory of the machine gun fire
when they had made two rounds.
We lost about 30 to 40 percent
of the inhabitants of each wagon.
With all the carnage, the train went on.
Those of us who could survive on a piece of bread
and a bowl of soup simply hung in.
Suicides into the electrified wires,
finding maybe and excuse to be shot
to end their life was not unusual.
On Friday, April 11 at 3:15,
we hear a very unfamiliar noise, a mechanical noise.
I see a tank coming up.
Being familiar with German insignia,
I didn't see that.
What I saw instead, of all things,
was a white Star of David.
The commander wore a uniform
of the United States Third Army
headed by General George Patton.
It's difficult to reach of 88
and see the world not get along with one another.
I witnessed Kosovo, Somalia, Darfur, Rwanda,
and another 20 different genocides since World War II,
and one Sunday morning, seeing Mr. Trump ask the audience,
supposed supporters, to raise their hand and give an oath.
Things like this are not very welcome
to somebody who survived the Holocaust.
Democracy, I believe, has a chance
to be greatly diminished in our country.
Are we actually going to build a fence around our country
and make a ghetto out of the United States?
Are we going to have 11 million people sent out
and make refugees?
I just simply cannot accept
that America goes the way of Germany at one time.
Have we learned anything about World War II,
Korean War, Vietnam, Iraqi Wars?
People choose not to live in peace
based on the certain agendas
whether political or in some cases, religious.
So we have to learn not just from the holocaust,
because it is a historical fact
that people don't seem to be able to live in peace
and in agreement for a better life.