- Klaus Zwilsky, 74, of Calvert County MD, is a Holocaust
survivor.
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- He was not sent to a concentration camp, nor did he spend
World War II hiding in the home of a sympathtic non-Jew. Instead, Zwilsky
survived in a Jewish hospital in Berlin, with the knowledge, and
consent, of the Nazi government.
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- Zwilsky is one of twenty who were interviewed for Daniel
B. Silver's book "Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital
Outlasted the Nazis." The book details how the 800 or so Jews
living in the hospital managed to survive in the capital of Nazi Germany.
Causes range from bureaucratic infighting to German leader Adolf Hitler's
ambivalence about how to handle Jews of German descent to the simple
fact that the Nazis needed a place to treat Jews.
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- They did not know at this time that places like Theresienstadt
were not relocation camps but places for Jews to be held before they
were sent to their death at another location. Zwilsky and his family
did not learn about many of these things until after the war.
-
- "We didn't know at the time," he said, that
the Nazis were systematically executing Jews. "You find out all these
things afterwards."
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- Maryland Holocaust Survivor Makes A Point
Of Speaking Out
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- By Ben Blumberg
- Washington Post Scholarship Winner
-
- Klaus Zwilsky, 74, of Calvert County MD, is a Holocaust
survivor. However, his story is relatively unique among Jews who emerged
from the horrors of Nazi Germany. He was not sent to a concentration camp,
nor did he spend World War II hiding in the home of a sympathtic non-Jew.
Instead, Zwilsky survived in a Jewish hospital in Berlin, with the knowledge,
and consent, of the Nazi government.
-
- "We were very fortunate to survive," he said.
He remembers the Gestapo, German secret police, ordering members of his
extended family off to the concentration camp at Theresienstadt in January
of 1943. "Most of the family got wiped out."
-
- Klaus Zwilsky is one of about 800 Jews who lived through
the Holocaust in a Jewish hospital in the capital of Nazi Germany.(Bruce
Armstrong)
-
- Zwilsky is one of twenty who were interviewed for Daniel
B. Silver's book "Refuge in Hell: How Berlin's Jewish Hospital Outlasted
the Nazis." The book details how the 800 or so Jews living in the
hospital managed to survive in the capital of Nazi Germany. Causes range
from bureaucratic infighting to German leader Adolf Hitler's ambivalence
about how to handle Jews of German descent to the simple fact that the
Nazis needed a place to treat Jews.
-
- Because Zwilsky's father was a pharmacist, they were
allowed to live at the hospital in relatively good conditions. They received
running water, heat and electricity at the benefit of soldiers undergoing
treatment.
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- As a child, Zwilsky spent his time reading, assisting
with the gardening and playing with the other children at the hospital.
That is not to say, however, that the experience was not difficult. Between
Allied carpet bombings and the constant threat of being deported by the
Nazis, Zwilsky and the other occupants of the hospital lived on edge.
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- "Certainly there was fear," he said. At times,
they almost wished to be sent off to a camp, just to relieve themselves
of the constant threat of danger. They did not know at this time that places
like Theresienstadt were not relocation camps but places for Jews to be
held before they were sent to their death at another location. Zwilsky
and his family did not learn about many of these things until after the
war.
-
- "We didn't know at the time," he said, that
the Nazis were systematically executing Jews. "You find out all these
things afterwards." Soviet troops reaching Berlin in April of 1945
were surprised to find any Jews alive in the city at all because they had
discovered that the Nazis were planning to exterminate those who remained.
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- "We found out afterwards that an order had been
given to kill all of us on the twenty-fifth of April and I think it was
the twenty-first that the Russians appeared," Zwilsky said. "Had
the war gone on any longer I wouldn't be here." He was the first Jew
to have a Bar-Mitzvah, a Jewish rite of passage for boys at the age of
thirteen, in Germany after the war.
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- His experiences left him scarred but with a new appreciation
for life. Survivor's guilt plagued him for the better part of thirty years
because he survived while so many others, including the members of his
own extended family who were taken in 1943, did not. But it does not do
any good, he said, to feel guilty. Today he makes a point of telling others
about his story, particularly because of those who wish to deny that the
Holocaust ever happened.
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- "That's one of the reasons I'm here," he said,
speaking to a group of high school students, in order to make people believe
the stories. It makes him angry, and perplexed, to hear people express
disbelief at the deaths of over ten million people, six million of them
Jewish. "Deniers don't have a leg to stand on."
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- Despite his firm stance against Holocaust deniers, he
does feel that they have a right to voice their ideas. He believes that
laws punishing Holocaust denial are a little foolish, as is the act of
denying in the first place. But he does understand the rationale. He adopts
a similar approach when speaking about Germany today.
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- "No one likes to talk about difficult times,"
he said, about the tendency for German families to avoid speaking to their
children about the Holocaust. "I can't forgive the people who were
responsible for the Holocaust," but he also can't hold their children
and grandchildren responsible.
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- Zwilsky and his family arrived in the United States in
1947, after relatives in new Jersey recognized Zwilsky's father in a New
York Times article about Germany's surviving Jews. It was here that Zwilsky
finished his schooling, earned a doctorate, and became a metallurgist.
He and his wife, Robert Safer, today live in Calvert County as part of
the small but strong local Jewish congregation Beit Chaverim.
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- "I have been very pleased," he said, "that
I have not had any experiences of Anti-Semitism in the county." He
and his wife believe that the welcoming nature in Calvert has been beneficial
for them both as Jews because this is not always the case elsewhere. However,
they still fear that the suffering of the Jews at the hands of the Nazi
regime will be forgotten if they do not speak up.
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- "I don't want the story to be forgotten," Zwilsky
said, "and it needs to be repeated and people should know about it
and that it really happened. There was such a thing as the Holocaust and
it should be remembered."
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- Ben Blumberg is a senior at Calvert High School.
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- Post Scholarship Winners
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- Local high school seniors Benjamin Blumberg and Ashley
Lau were awarded $2,500 college scholarships from The Washington Post.
Click below to read their winning articles.
- Lau: Dropping Out for Day Jobs
- Blumberg: Survivor Speaks Out
- About the Scholarships
-
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- http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR200...
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- END OF QUOTE
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- Revisionist history is amazing--and so educational as
well. Just think, there were all these jews in the Nazi capital, being
well-treated in a Jewish hospital there, without ever knowing that a holocaust
was going on at the same time. Incredible.
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