Today is the 70th anniversary of Germany invading Poland, starting World War II.
Triggered by a radio program I heard today, I started wondering:
Are there any German concentration camp survivors that are still alive?
I once heard a survivor of Treblinka give a talk and a Q and A about her experiences, but this was probably around 15 years ago…
I would imagine that there are tens of thousands of survivors still living, but with the passing of time, fewer each year.
I am pretty sure - from time to time various concentration camp survivors still give talks at schools in our district. Some of them are not German (there are some who regularly make the trip from Poland, Israel or the US - in their 80s!) but some are. Don’t recall an article in the local paper the last few months but it is pretty unlikely they all died recently.
Someone who was in their teens in 1945 (less chance of surviving if you were too young to work) would only be eightyish now after all.
As far as I know, Eli Wiesel is still alive.
So, yes.
Sure. Sixty of the “Schindler’s List” were still alive in January:
Schindler’s List survivor speaks at I-House
The oldest Holocaust survivor recently spoke at Harvard:
The San Diego paper recently had an article on the dwindling number of Holocaust survivors.
http://www3.signonsandiego.com/stories/2009/apr/18/1n18shoa001211-making-each-day-count/
Field trip in 2006, couple survivors spoke…
It’s only recently that the last Titanic survivor (1912) passed away, and there are still three or four WWI soldiers (1914-1918) still kicking around. There will be plenty more years before the entire Holocaust survivor population are gone.
At least three relatives of mine are still alive having been at Auschwitz (and eventually at Buchenwald), Bergen-Belsen, and Buchenwald respectively. The survivor of the latter, my uncle, had also been at Mittelbau-Dora. Personally, I can’t believe anyone could survive that.
They are hardly unique in being ‘surviving survivors’. Many of their friends share similar backgrounds.
Like KarlGauss, I have trouble imagining surviving the camps in the first place. I’m amazed that people were able to recover from the treatment there and survive another 65years+.
From this article:
Sadly, it sounds like the numbers are dwindling fast.
Yes. My mother. My aunt. My uncle. For example.
Mike Jacobs in Dallas, TX (born in 1925). Here is his web site.
http://www.mikejacobsholocaustsurvivor.com/
I have met him and his wife and have a copy of his book.
My mom, my dad, my aunt and other relatives.
Oh, yes. There is a professor at the University of Michigan - Dearborn who still speaks about it in classes.
My wife’s grandmother is a concentration camp survivor who’s still with us.
In Buenos Aires, every year there is a “Museum night”, all the museums in the city are open all night long and they are free. Last year I went to the “Holocaust Museum” and I was reading a the story of a survivor, a man approached and said “That’s me”, and he certainly was (the story had his photograph).
First time I’ve met a survivor. And, by his look, he’ll probably survive me.
My cousin’s husband’s father survived the camps, and is still alive. He had been married, with kids, but was the only survivor. After the war he remarried and had another large family.
And Elie Wiesel has lived long enough to be one of Bernie Madoff’s victims.
That is savage.
If Anne Frank had lived, she would have been 80 this past summer. She was born within a couple of months of Audrey Hepburn and Jackie Kennedy. Although all of them are deceased, it isn’t that unusual to find women celebrating the century mark. I have had two aunts that made it and I know two other women who lived to be 105. Considering that Anne was 15 near the end of the war and there were much younger children who survived, I would think that we will have survivors with us for a while.
I recall reading that Roman Polanski lived in the Warsaw Ghetto.
Plenty. My maternal grandmother for one, and my maternal grandfather who only passed away a few weeks ago. In Israel, they’re still quite common.