Elias Feihzilberg- A Holocaust Survivor

Every Wednesday night at the Jerusalem Center we get the opportunity to attend forums. This past Wednesday we had the wonderful opportunity to listen to Elias Feihzilberg, a survivor of the Holocaust. As I have progressed in school, I have always learned about the Holocaust.  But this was the first time I have heard an account of the Holocaust from a first person perspective.

As soon as he walked into the room, my heart swelled with such love for him.  He has this sweet countenance about him.  He is also one of the most cheerful 95 year old men I have ever met.  He did not speak English. He spoke Spanish, which is actually his third language.  His native language is Yiddish.  His second language is German, and then his third language is Spanish.  When he spoke to us we had two students translate for the rest of the group.  (That in itself was a cool experience.  I love how there are so many young people who are cultured, and who can speak various languages.  It is incredible. )

I do not like to dwell on the bad, but I think Elias’ story is inspiring. Elias grew up in Poland.  He is the oldest of seven children.  Near the beginning of the war, he “volunteered” to go and work.  The work they had the Jewish people do was very hard, strenuous, and intense. He started out by building a road. They did long assembly lines from Germany to Poland to pass off heavy supplies for the road.  He eventually left and worked on a ship transporting cargo off the ship.  He recounts how every time they were almost done with one ship, another full one would show up.  Eventually he got so sick there because his feet where so swollen they permitted him to leave. He was able to go and stop at his village and see his house.  However when he got there his whole family was gone.  He found out his father had died of starvation and his family had died in gas chambers.  The agony he must have felt is unfathomable.

From there he moved around working. He even went to Auschwitz. He remembers there being two lines.  He didn’t know where they both led.  One was a working line though.  Initially when he went up they turned him away because he looked too sick.  But he left the line and tried to get color into his cheeks by hitting them.  When he went back they took him and he began working again. He worked in the mines which was very dangerous.  However, he later learned that the other line was a death line and the people in that line were killed.

Elias is one of millions who faced these horrific experiences.  He survived 9 concentration camps.  He expresses how he does not know how he survived.  However he did survive, and he continued on with his life.

He met his wife in the kitchen that cooked food for the survivors.  She cut the potatoes. They got married and moved to Guatamala.  Later they would move to Jerusalem.  He gives all of his thanks to God.  He told us that it was hard to leave Hell, and it is also hard to look back.  But as he talked I sat there thinking.  Here is this man before me, who literally survived a Hell. Yet I hear about his life now and he has done so much with it.

He had no control over these things that happened to him.   He was the participant in a very cruel and unfair, hate filled war.  Yet he sat before me and when he talked about his present life he was so cheerful.     He goes to a concentration camp survivor group every day.  He lives for his family- children, grandchildren, and great-grandchildren.  Elias is an incredible man.  He is a hero in every sense of the word that can teach us so much.  We control how we are going to live, and respond to things in life.

“I am the master of my fate, I am the captain of my soul.” –Invictus