Reflections

     I was 13 1/2 in 1983. On April 6th of that year, I was at the dentist getting braces and then at the eye doctor getting my glasses. A traumatic experience at that age, at least in my sheltered, fortunate teenage life. When Bill Glied was 13 1/2, he was getting off the train in Auschwitz with his mother, father, and younger sister. How could I ever truly understand what the life of a Holocaust survivor is like, when my greatest teenage trauma centred around two things basically aimed at improving my life? Bill Glied's experience is an example of what happens when human beings lose their humanity...

   Bill was born in Yugoslavia, close to the Hungarian border, where his parents had a flour mill and grew hops. He said he attended public school in the morning and Jewish school in the afternoon.

    "All was good," he said, "until the spring of 1941, when Hungary allowed the German army to cross their border. I even watched the "mighty army," thinking how amazing they were in their uniforms. A few weeks later though, my father was forced to give up the flour mill, and I was forced to switch from learning the Serbian language to Hungarian at school."

     "The first few months were fine," he said. "We had about 50 kids in class, 4 of whom were Jewish, but we were eventually told by the teacher to sit at the back of the class. I didn't know why, but from that moment on, my life changed. All of a sudden I was a dirty Jew, who was no longer any good at soccer, the game I loved as a goalie. My family life changed also--our telephone was disconnected, and our radio had to be turned in to the post office. Then there was another new order saying Jews could not go to the movies on Sunday afternoon--I loved the movies."

    Other orders came down from the government saying that Jewish people had to walk on the middle of the road, not the sidewalk. When they did, no one did, or said anything about it. 

   "All of a sudden you were a different person. Also, we were only allowed to go the market after 4 in the afternoon, so basically we had to buy whatever was leftover, and in 1943, we received an order that we had to wear a large yellow star wherever we went, again to make us different."

   In 1944,  600,000 Jewish men, women, and children were deported in 59 days. Of those, 150,000 survived...others were primarily killed in Auschwitz. It was at this time that Bill's father told his family they were leaving town to be "resettled" in the east. 

    "Dad told us not to worry, but that we had to leave the next day and all we could take was what we could carry under our arm. We left our house, doors open, with everything we owned still inside. We walked to the centre of town, assembled in front of city hall, and 3,000 of us marched to the railway station. Both sides of the street were filled with people, watching in silence as we left."

      When they got to the railway station, he described the long line of boxcars, the German officers, and the Hungarian gendarmes with rooster feathers in their caps. He says the soldiers forced them into boxcars containing as many as 90 people,  most of whom were forced to stand, and with no washroom facilities. 

      Bill's family was in the boxcar for 2 days and 2 nights. On the 3rd morning, the doors opened to the platform at Auschwitz.....

    Bill is telling us little pieces of his story as we travel from place to place every day, so he wants to continue his story tomorrow. Speaking with him on the bus today, however, there seemed to be a real sadness in his eyes as he talked briefly about his arrival at Auschwitz. Many people, I'm sure, would rather forget such horrifying memories of a lost childhood, but Bill told me today that, as difficult as this trip is for him, he does it because he's afraid people will forget about the Holocaust. Imagine, this man of 83, taking on such a responsibility...now I will never forget Bill, let alone the Holocaust, and neither will my students.....