My father was born in Essen, Germany in 1926. He moved to Czechoslovakia in 1933 with his parents and sister to escape Nazi rule.  Unfortunately, the “escape” only lasted until 1939 when Germans invaded Czechoslovakia. Luckily, my grandfather was on a business trip to Istanbul, Turkey at the time. Instead of returning to Czechoslovakia, he remained in Istanbul. He eventually obtained false passports which enabled my father, grandmother, and aunt to leave Czechoslovakia and reach Istanbul. In 1948, my father came to the United States to study at MIT and stayed.

It was years before my father would talk about the Holocaust. He finally began to speak at synagogues and a Jewish day school when he was in his 80s. He ended his presentations with this message:

“After about a year in the U.S., I was wondering why – here I was living all by myself in a foreign country (my parents and sister were still in Turkey) – why was I feeling so happy and comfortable?  I couldn’t quite understand this. Then I realized that the U.S. was the first country in which I was treated as an equal. That’s something you cannot take for granted…..Believe me, this is something you should always treasure and watch out for. [It is something that has always been very important] – the fact that I could live here as anybody else.”

He then reminded the students that Germany had also been a democracy before Hitler. He concluded, “The freedom we have in this country is a right that you have to preserve.  Appreciate it, work on it, and make sure that it always stays this way.”

I recently finished Teach the Shoah’s Moving From Testimony to Story course and have started sharing my father’s story with friends. I told this story to a close non-Jewish friend who grew up without much Holocaust education. Their response exactly reflected my father’s message and one reason I want to make sure his story is not lost – now or in the future:

“Listening to your story made me feel so proud to be American,” they said. “Americans need to hear how your father felt being in this country.  They need to realize how much is changing; how much we are losing. This story is so important. We must never forget what happened in the past but also must realize what is happening today.”