Pittsburgh (Kdka) – eighty years ago, on January 27, 1945, Soviet soldiers released Auschwitz and discovered the horrors of the Holocaust.
The day now also known as the International Day of the Holocaust memory honors the six million Jews killed in the massacre, almost a million of which were killed in the Nazi extermination field. It comes in the midst of a drastic increase in anti -Semitism and a little more than a year after October 7, the worst attack against the Jews from the Holocaust.
After the war, several Jewish families settled in the Pittsburgh area in search of the American dream. We had to talk to two of them, who survived the Holocaust and went through Auschwitz, so they could share their stories and make sure we never forget.
Growing up in Pittsburgh, Max Glenter quickly realized not giving things for granted.
“I learned from my grandparents, that life is not guaranteed,” said Max.
Through the years, he heard and read the stories of his grandparents, who were survivors of the Holocaust.
Born in Lodz, Poland, Max’s grandfather, Simon, was only 13 years old, when the Germans invaded the country and created ghettos in 1939.
Simon’s mother had already died of a stroke a year before after Kristallnacht, when the Nazis burned and destroyed synagogues in Germany.
Almost at the same time, one of Simon’s two older brothers died of malnutrition.
“While we were looking for food, we obtained the shock of our lives. On a dish, we found several human ears. We were so disgusted and scared that we left this apartment,” Simon said in a hand written testimony.
In 1944, the Nazis placed them in a cattle car without windows or food and took them to Auschwitz.
“Remember that there was an orchestra playing music when they arrived,” Max said.
When they got off, Simon’s father was sent to the left, and he and his brother were sent to the right.
“When I asked the command where my father is, said the undulating smoke of the crematorium, that is where your father was,” Simon said in hand written by hand.
Simon feared it was next. His future wife, Francine, Max’s grandmother, could also have faced gas cameras. Born in Lithuania, she was sent to a camp north of Poland, when one day the Nazis transported it to Auschwitz.
“When their cattle car arrived, they said, we have no place to put these people, because we cannot kill quickly enough, so the train returned to Stutthof,” Max said.
He experienced his own evil, such as Simon, who remembered to do Labor work like rock rocks, be packed in the barracks as sardines with food rations and be beaten and tortured.
That was also the case of Melvin Goldman, 21, who also went to the field of extermination from the Ghetto Lodz. In a moment, he had six teeth shot down.
Lee Goldman Kikel is Melvin’s daughter.
“He said that if he thought that Lodz’s Ghetto was bad, this was horrible, and this was hell,” Lee said.
Unlike Max, Lee learned the story of his father from audio recordings almost 20 years after his death in 1996.
“You smell something, you couldn’t feel, but you knew in the background that smelled of human flesh,” Melvin said in his recordings.
Melvin and one of his brothers were saved. His parents and another five brothers were gased.
“He said he would think for himself, never knew if he was going to live to see the next day,” Lee said.
However, he saw another day, along with Simon, who left Auschwitz and were sent to other concentration fields, where they continued to pass in the marches of death and experienced a failed health, each weighed less than 90 pounds.
Finally, they were released from those fields more than three months after the same thing happened in Auschwitz in January 1945. Simon was 18 years old. Melvin was 22 years old.
“They said: ‘You will probably never walk’, and my dad said: ‘Well, I’m going to walk and do this on my own or I’m not going to be here,” Lee said.
After receiving treatment and rehabilitation for some years and discovering their next steps, they went to America and Pittsburgh. Simon went on to hang curtains in houses, and Melvin became jeweler.
According to the center of the Pittsburgh Holocaust, there were two of more than 350 survivors who came to the region.
“My grandfather told my father, if you have to eat sand or grass, whatever you have to eat, what you have to do, you have to keep alive for someone from the family to survive,” Lee said.
While it was difficult for Melvin to express what happened, he saved his Auschwitz bracelet until the day of his death.
“It was no longer a name, just a number,” Lee said.
It is a reminder of the atrocity that millions of Jews spent so many years ago, and the fight that continues today.
“The times can be very dark, but it is something very core to, you know, the Jewish community. How do we make those memories a blessing?” Max said. “Through this darkness, the light will shine.”
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