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    Creating Light
    Creating Light
    Creating Light
    Ebook120 pages1 hour

    Creating Light

    By Beth Hurley Luers

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    About this ebook





    The book presents 3 Holocaust survivors, Leo Bretholz, Martin Gray, & Thomas Buergenthal, and what they have done to give back to the world to make it a more humane place when that same world tried to kill them. Lessons in moving forward, and brotherhood.



    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPublishdrive
    Release dateAug 29, 2016
    ISBN9780997851557
    Creating Light

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      Book preview

      Creating Light - Beth Hurley Luers

      CREATING LIGHT

      Beth Hurley Luers

      I should like someone to remember there once lived a person named David Berger.

      – David Berger, Age 19

      In his last letter

      Murdered by the Nazis

      In Vilna 1941

      Copyright ©2016 by Beth Hurley Luers

      Sentia Publishing Company has the exclusive rights to reproduce this work, to prepare derivative works from this work, to publicly distribute this work, to publicly perform this work, and to publicly display this work.

      All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without the prior written permission of the copyright owner.

      Printed in the United States of America.

      ISBN 978-0-9978515-5-7

      For the six million, and now, plus two

      Introduction

      How long have I been standing here? Five, ten minutes? Longer? I have stood here before, but in the end, I have always walked around and not through.

      I am in front of a cattle car at the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. This is a cattle car that changed lives. For most, it changed life into death. Over the course of World War II, this rail car carried thousands to prison, concentration, and extermination camps where most died from disease, overwork, starvation, medical experiments, and execution.

      Why? What had these people done? What crime could infants, toddlers, or children have committed? For millions, their only crime was that they had been born, and born Jewish. Nothing else. For others who were not Jewish, their crimes varied. They stood up to the Nazis or tried to. They hid Jews from the Nazis or tried to. They were Sinti, Roma, homosexuals, or Communists. They were those who opposed Adolf Hitler. They were all to be exterminated.

      This time I decided to walk through the cattle car. I looked around and saw very few people nearby. I slowly walked inside and before I knew it, I was on my knees with my hands and arms covering my head. I was being pummeled by the anguish, the torment, and the energy within that rail car. When I realized where I was, I stood up shaken, wiped the tears from my face, and walked on.

      That only happened to me once. During subsequent visits to the museum, when I walked through the cattle car, nothing happened. I was left wondering why. Why had I felt that deep pain and sadness when others walking through the car didn’t seem to?

      When I was a young girl in the early 1960s, I began a habit that has lasted my entire life. That is the need to know all I could about Adolf Hitler’s Holocaust, and the loathing and envy that brought it about. I long ago gave up trying to understand such hatred and brutality. I don’t think there is such understanding, at least not for me.

      It is unusual that an eight–year-old girl would pick up William L. Shirer’s The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich and try to read it. In part, my reason for doing so had to do with my father. I was a complete Daddy’s girl. My Dad had been a history teacher and did a lot of reading about Communism. I found that too ever-present, too scary. It was, after all ,1960, and the tensions between the United States and the U.S.S.R. were running high. So I picked up a book about Adolf Hitler, the Nazis, and the Holocaust sitting on our bookshelf. Even if I did not totally understand what I was reading, I was hooked. I would read until I had nightmares, and it was always the same nightmare. I would read something lighter for a week or two until the nightmares stopped. Then I would resume my reading about the Holocaust. Any history papers I had to write in high school or graduate school about that time period would be on different aspects of the Holocaust. Many thought my preoccupation curious since I am not Jewish.

      I guess I can honestly say that it is my passion, and I have used it to try to inspire my students.

      A few years ago my interest was infused with new energy and purpose when I read, Sarah’s Key by Tatiana de Rosnay. Her story about the roundup of Jews in Paris in July 1942 was captivating. It related the tragic story of one Jewish family. Equally important to me was de Rosnay’s list of recommended books about that period in France included at the end of her book. Little did I know at the time how her book and that list of recommended readings would change my life.

      The first one I read was Leap into Darkness by Leo Bretholz and Michael Olesker. Leo’s story began in Vienna, Austria in 1921. He led a normal life with his parents and his two sisters. Other relatives lived nearby. However, after the Anschluss, the takeover of Austria by Germany in March of 1938, and after witnessing Adolf Hitler greeting the people of Vienna from his motorcade, Leo’s life changed forever.

      The Nazis quickly began to purge his beloved hometown of its Jewish population, especially its young men. Their hatred raged unchecked. Basically, it was No Jews allowed. Leo’s widowed mother, Dora, encouraged him to leave and find a safe haven. With the help of the Ezra Committee, a Jewish organization that at that time aided refugees from Germany and Austria, Leo left his family on 25 October 1938 and headed for Luxembourg. Unbeknownst to him, seventeen-year-old Leo Bretholz had just begun a harrowing seven years on the run from the Nazis. He would be caught several times and then escape, even from a cattle car on its way to Auschwitz. Only through extraordinary courage, resourcefulness, and determination was Leo able to survive.

      Leo arrived in the United States on 29 January 1947. He lived for a while with relatives in Baltimore, Maryland where he later married and raised his children. In October 1962, he received a notice informing him that his mother and two sisters had been murdered by the Nazis in 1942. It was only then, encouraged by his wife Flo, that he began sharing his story, to not only tell others what the Nazis had done to the Jews, but also to show how hatred can takes root and consume a nation and even a continent.

      It was through Leo Bretholz that I learned about another survivor, Martin Gray and his first book For Those I Loved. Born in 1922, Martin’s life was quite comfortable. His father was part owner of a factory that produced gloves and stockings in Warsaw, Poland. His family was Jewish and Catholic. There were holiday celebrations, outings with his parents, playtime with his brothers, and walks with his father who tried to teach him what it meant to be a man. Life was good… then came the war.

      On 1 September 1939, the German army invaded Poland. Fathers, uncles, and brothers then became soldiers in the Polish army. Mothers and children remained at home. The bombs, and with them the fires, destroyed all that was familiar. Martin’s father had left to fight for Poland leaving Martin to care for his family. He knew he must keep them safe and keep them fed. He was just seventeen.

      Fire played a significant and life-changing role in Martin Gray’s life. There were fires in Poland and

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