Holocaust survivor remembers victims, honors service members

Published April 11, 2013
By Sgt. 1st Class Stanley Maszczak
174th Infantry Brigade Public Affairs

JOINT BASE MCGUIRE-DIX-LAKEHURST, N.J. -- Tears were shed on more than one occasion during the Holocaust Remembrance Ceremony hosted by the 174th Infantry Brigade March 8, 2013 here. The Patriot Brigade's 1st Battalion, 314th Infantry Regiment worked with joint base partners to facilitate the touching and educational event.

Service members and civilians in attendance honored both those who lost their lives during the Holocaust as well as those who survived the atrocities perpetrated by Adolf Hitler and the Third Reich.

Harold Brisk, a Lakewood, N.J., native and guest speaker for the event, survived the Nazis' largest concentration camp for 11 months before being transferred to Dachau and subsequently liberated by American Soldiers.

"A brief sketch of a 13-year-old Auschwitz survivor," he said from the podium, beginning his address to the group. He paused, looked down and closed his eyes, trying to hold back the tears.

"It will take a while to calm me down," he said quietly. Chaplain (Maj.) Rabbi Menashe P. Miller, 87th Air Base Wing chaplain, approached the stage to assist. Just as he made it up the stairs next to the podium, Brisk regained his composure and continued.

"I was born in August 1930 to a family in Romania," he said. His family soon moved him west, close to the Hungarian border. His bordering Romanian village forced all non-indigenous Jews to leave when Hungary joined the Axis with Nazi Germany, Brisk explained. He and his older brother went to live with his maternal grandparents.

"My parents and three younger brothers moved to another part of Hungary," he said, his eyes welling up with tears. "I never saw them again."

Brisk went on to share memories from childhood and his three-day boxcar journey to Auschwitz.

"We were cramped into the cattle cars, box cars - families, about 80-90 people in the car, children screaming, crying, no water, no food."

He also shared a few close calls that kept him alive.

The first occurred upon arrival at Auschwitz when he was 13. He met a fellow Jew who was working there, unloading the railroad boxcars that were used to transport Jews and other victims to the concentration camps. The young man asked Brisk if he spoke Yiddish. He did, and they began to converse.

"When you go to the top of the line," the young man said, "people are being directed left and right. Right - the elderly, children - all destined for the crematorium. Left - people who go to work. Tell them you're 16 years old and you worked on a farm."

"He checked my muscles and sent me to the right place," Brisk said. "That's how I survived."

During an interview, Brisk spoke of the severe frostbite he endured, working outside in the winter with no shoes. After being transferred to the Dachau concentration camp and going into the hospital there, doctors advised him that if he'd waited another week to be seen, he would have lost both of his legs - another close call. His toes and feet still had to be amputated.

"There was no anesthesia; three people were holding me down, I was screaming ..."

The agonizing medical procedures, the subhuman conditions, the starvation - Brisk said by the time he was 15 years old in the camp, he weighed only 27 kilograms, or approximately 59 pounds.

Hearing stories like these, shared at events like this one across the nation, serve important purposes in the military and the world. This year's National Days of Remembrance Theme is "Never again - Heeding the warning signs."

"It's our hope that this event will properly memorialize the victims of the Holocaust," said Col. Craig A. Osborne, 174th Inf. Bde. commander, "This provides educational value to all of us, that we could each learn something from it; and strengthen our resolve to prevent future acts of genocide."

"It's important because we can't ever let that happen again," said Sgt. 1st Class Harold Hollander, 1st Bat., 314th Inf. Reg. Hollander contributed to the ceremony by lighting one of the remembrance candles, and was also a featured speaker. His grandfather, Marion Ksionek, who passed away in October 2000, was a holocaust survivor and family patriarch.

"He was a big part of my family life," said Hollander. "Growing up, I remember all the major holidays were at his house, all my relatives together. He and my grandmother had 11 children, and you can imagine all the children and grandchildren that would gather... It was because of his gatherings ... that we came together as a family."

Like Brisk, Hollander said it was difficult for his grandfather to talk about what he endured at the hands of the Nazis.

"He would talk about them briefly - a lot of times he'd start to get tears in his eyes in remembrance of what he had lived through," Hollander said.

Seeing the effects of genocide first-hand in 1999 helped Hollander begin to understand why his grandfather was so reluctant to discuss the events of the Holocaust. When Hollander was assigned to the 82nd Airborne Division in Kosovo, some of the local Albanians took him and his team to see mass graves of Albanian people.

"It wasn't until after my service there that I understood a portion of the atrocities my grandfather had to endure," said Hollander.

During the ceremony, six 174th Inf. Bde. Soldiers came forward, one at a time, each to light a candle in remembrance of different groups of people dehumanized by the Nazis. The people honored included those with disabilities and disabling conditions who were starved to death and murdered; the 1.5 million infants and children exterminated; residents of the Warsaw ghetto who were rounded up, displaced and murdered; and those who perished at each of the six concentration camps.

A seventh candle was then lit by Rita Amanik, the second Holocaust survivor in attendance. Everyone in the room stood in support and honor of her presence and all that she endured as her name was called and she moved forward.

Attendees standing included not only service members and joint base civilians, but also approximately 40 members of the local Lakewood Jewish community. About 30 of those were Brisk's children and grandchildren.

Despite all he endured, Brisk said he has no feelings of vengeance toward the Nazis.

"God will do the revenging," Brisk said. "My revenge is creating a family. Every child born is a defeat of Hitler."

Visit www.facebook.com/174inf for additional information, photos and video from the event.

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Holocaust survivor remembers victims, honors service members