Holocaust survivor shares his ‘journey’

PALMER — “I want to take you on a journey,” Irving Roth told packed Palmer High School theatre Thursday. Roth is a Holocaust survivor born in 1929 in what was then Czechoslovakia. He included a visit to Palmer and Burchell high schools before a scheduled speaking engagement in Anchorage later that evening.

Roth is the director of the Holocaust Resource Center at the Temple Judea of Manhasset, New York, and is the former education director of the Holocaust Memorial and Education Center of Nassau County. An internationally known educator, Roth has endeavored to teach people about the Holocaust and the lessons that can be learned from that experience. Through his participation in programs such as Adopt-A-Survivor, in which young people “adopt” a Holocaust survivor and learn of his or her experiences; and March of the Living, Roth continues his work to ensure that an atrocity like the Holocaust never happens again.

“A journey to a time when Europe was becoming more and more democratic. When people were accepting of more and more religious groups…the first time Jews were citizens of every country, except Romania.”

Roth was referring to the early 1930s prior to the rise of Hitler’s National Socialism and the Nazi party.

“Colleagues, neighbors, friends. God-fearing, church-going people were transformed, into murderers. I have experienced that time,” Roth said.

Roth began his engaging presentation with a family background. He said his father was born in the 1890s, graduating college in 1914. After that, and served in the German-Austrian-Hungarian Army for 3 1/2 years quickly earning the rank of second lieutenant. By 1918, Roth noted his father he was a major, and had been pinned personally by the Hungarian emperor himself. A few years later, Irving was born.

Roth said his very early childhood was uneventful and happy.

“In first grade, I met this magnificent creature…a girl,” Roth told the audience of mostly teenagers. “By the end of the first year, I was carrying her books. By the end of the second, we were doing homework together. By the end of the third, we sometimes held hands.”

By the mid 1930s the rise of the Third Reich had begun. By 1938, Roth noted that Germany had demanded a portion of Czechoslovakia. He said the world foolishly gave Germany what it wanted with the understanding that the upstart country, which had been belittled globally after World War I, would not start another.

“When a bully wants half of your pastrami sandwich. If not, he says if you don’t give it to me, I’ll beat you up…the next thing he wants is your whole lunch,” Roth said. “The world said okay, take it…”

Roth said it wasn’t long from his perspective as a 10-year old, he began to realize his country didn’t like him. Roth shared the story of how that change from a happy-go-lucky youth to a Jewish boy with an indelible identification number tattooed on his arm. Roth said he first observed the change in the summer of 1939.

“I understood what was going in the summer of 1939. I was going to meet my friend at the park…we got to the park and I was told that Jews were not allowed,” Roth said noting the rights of Jewish people were taken away slowly, step by step. “OK, I couldn’t go to the park, I’ll go to beach. It’s summer time, warm, it was hot.”

Again he was denied entry. Degradation of the Jewish people continued.

“It was the winter of 1939, I was 10 years old in a cold place. Not quite like Alaska,” Roth quipped. “I had a sheepskin coat. It was declared by government of Slovakia to be a luxurious item…Jews not allowed to have them. I had to deliver my jacket to the police department…people change. I couldn’t go out at night. After dark, no Jews were allowed outside. During the day, I had to be identified. Not as a Jew, but a number.”

Roth said the spring of 1940, he was carrying his girlfriend’s books home and hoping to arrange to do some homework. He was told no and that his girlfriend’s father had directed her not to talk to him anymore because he was Jewish. That was quickly followed by every Jewish student, from kindergarten to graduate school, getting expelled from school.

“It was September 1940, the start of the school year. I get to the school gate, the principal said you can’t go…because you’re a Jew,” Roth said. “On that same day, every single Jewish teacher from kindergarten to college was fired.”

Roth said soon, people of Jewish decent were no longer allowed to own a business. His family had built a successful manufacturing business making railroad ties. He asked the audience to imagine having someone walk in and demanding not only the keys to your building, but the business itself. Roth said his family had a Christian friend who placed the business in his name, which was permissible.

“Of course I’ll do that, anything to help you,” Roth said of the friend. “Every Jewish business was taken over by friends…it was business as usual…life continues to be the same.”

But even close family friends became corrupt. Roth said it wasn’t long before the family friend soon demanded half the company profits, then complimented his father on how well he was running (the friend’s) business and how his father was allowed to stay on as manager.

“In addition to the law, people change…they were transformed from friends to persecutors,” said Roth.

In 1941, Germany invaded the Soviet Union driving as close as 80 miles from Moscow in the process. Roth said all German soldiers were trained to fire machine guns. He said five battalions that had made the drive toward the Soviet’s largest city, were instructed to take Jewish people found in towns and villages along the way, march them to a ravine, and shoot them. Roth said the first six months of the 1941, a half-million of the approximate 11 million Jewish people were murdered.

The following year, the Nazi Party came up with “The Final Solution.” Roth said party leaders gathered in what he described as a lovely villa outside Berlin. That solution was extinction of the Jewish race. Roth said most of those involved were extremely bright people. He said the meeting had a single agenda…how to dispose of the Jewish race quickly and cheaply. Roth said the idea of death camps was completely assembled in 90 minutes.

“Rails to transport, gas chambers to murder, and crematoriums to burn. All 11 million Jews will be ashes,” said Roth. He said classmates, relatives and friends all disappeared. Because his father was a manager, he received an exemption. At that point, Roth said the family decided to get across the border to Hungary. The Hungarians were not following German protocol but did use Jewish men as what Roth termed slave labor. That included running point for army tanks to locate buried landmines.

By 1944, Roth noted the tide of war changed. The Soviet Union had pushed Germany back, the United States occupied Italy and was bombing Berlin daily pushes back Germany. In the spring of that year, Roth and his family were among the 530,000 Jewish people picked up, some put into ghettos and others stuffed in cattle cars.

“For three days we were in the there. No room to sit…I had no idea where they taking me,” Roth said. “When I arrived, I looked up in the distance and saw smoke. There was a building with a chimney and fire. Four thousand people, 3,700 by end of the night were ashes.”

Roth said he had survived the “first selection” living on a cup of coffee for breakfast, bowl of soup for lunch and piece of bread at night.

“I was always hungry and tired, it showed,” Roth said he had withered down to 75 pounds noting that if someone was deemed too skinny, “…the next morning a truck picked up you to take you to the gas chamber.”

In January of 1945, Roth was part of the “death march” from Auschwitz. Roth said he ended up at a camp in Buchenwald, part of 10,000 Jews eventually lined up in front of the gate. Liberation came on April 11, 1945, as American bombers flew overhead.

“The next day, there were no guards. At 3 p.m., two American soldiers…battle-hardened…walked into our barracks. We were skeletons shuffling around…the soldiers broke down,” Roth said.

After recuperating, Roth went in search of his family. Through the kindness of a Hungarian woman and her daughter, his parents were hidden in a one-room apartment for several years.

“Someone willing to help…the righteous of the world,” said Roth. He said of the 11 million Jewish people, only a few hundred thousand survived the German’s “Final Solution.” He said most Jews from his city could not return. Of those that did and asked for their property back, hundreds were shot. He said in 1947, the UN finally gave them a home…a place where the Jewish people had lived for a thousand years—Israel.

However, many of Israel’s Arab neighbors said no, they were not welcome in the region. This animosity still currently exists in some Middle Eastern countries.

“I tell you this because hatred, unfortunately, is something that exists…the job of all of us, is to make sure we don’t propagate hatred…don’t succumb to that,” Roth said. “I have two big favors to ask of you. First, don’t stand by and do nothing. Make sure when you see evil, you stand up to it. You do something. And You can always do something.

Second, as time goes on Holocaust survivors who remember and lived through it will not be around. When your daughter is here in this classroom…I want you to remember that I came to talk to you in this school on this day, to tell your children, grandchildren and great grandchildren.”

Contact reporter Chris Ford at 352-2270 or chris.ford@frontiersman.com.