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January 21, 2005/Shevat 11 5765, Vol. 57, No. 21
60 years after Auschwitz
Survivors grateful for long lives, but struggle with memories
E.B. SOLOMONT
Jewish Telegraphic Agency
DEBORAH SUSSMAN SUSSER
Associate Editor
Like many survivors of Auschwitz, Phoenix resident Ed Heisler didn't talk about what happened to him for decades.
It wasn't until 1973, almost 30 years after being liberated from Auschwitz, that the tall, plain-spoken man first broke his silence. His audience was a confirmation class at his temple; he did it because the rabbi asked him to.
It wasn't as if the floodgates opened for him at that time. Heisler said that afterward, he essentially resumed his silence until 1989, when he began speaking regularly to groups, and especially students, in his home of Burbank, Calif.
He also granted a videotaped interview to the Wiesenthal Center, and gave a copy of the tape to each of his four children, with whom he rarely mentioned his past.
"I didn't feel too comfortable talking about this," Heisler explained. "A lot of the children I speak to in schools know more than my children."
Heisler was 14 in 1944 when he, his parents and two of his six siblings were taken from their home in Bilke, Poland, first to a ghetto in Hungary and then to Auschwitz.
"I was the only one from my Hebrew school of 20 people to survive," Heisler said. "They were a lot shorter. That's the reason."
New Yorker Simon Unger lived every day at Auschwitz thinking it would be his last.
"It was day-to-day," he said. "If you die today or tomorrow, you knew you were going to die because that's what Auschwitz was."
In fact, Unger not only survived the war but has lived 60 years since its end.
In 1995, 50 years after being liberated from what he calls a "living hell," he gathered nearly 80 friends to mark a "celebration of life."
"I am alive," the 81-year-old said Jan. 15 in a telephone interview with JTA from his home in Florida. "When I lived to the 40th" anniversary, "I didn't think I'd see the 50th. You never think you'll see it, but you live with hope."
Many Holocaust survivors liberated in 1945 are grateful they have lived this long, but the accomplishment is mixed with anxiety as they worry their experiences might be forgotten.
At last count, there were 122,000 Holocaust survivors living in the United States, according to the United Jewish Communities' National Jewish Population Survey 2000-01.
The survey paints a picture of the survivor population in America: As a general rule, survivors' median age is higher and they are frailer and in greater need of financial or social assistance than other elderly Jews, it found.
But many survivors, especially those who came to the United States in the years immediately following World War II, have done well financially.
"We have actually risen from ashes and made lives for ourselves. We pulled ourselves up, educated our children and raised families," survivor Joe Sachs said.
David Mermelstein, 76, a survivor and president of the Coalition of Holocaust Survivors in South Florida, explained that it wasn't always this way.
But "as age started to catch up, there were a lot of older people who got sick and the little money they had was used up," he said.
He said that five years ago, 79 survivors were on a waiting list for aid in the South Florida area and 350 others received aid, out of a population of about 3,000. "A lot of them don't want to ask for help," he added.
There's also the ongoing psychological pain.
"As far as coping with this thing," Heisler said of his experiences, "I've coped with it OK." He paused. "But from time to time, I don't cope with it. I just go into a deep abyss. It's not easy when half your family is killed. And some people fared worse. It's hard for people to understand this, and it does not go away from you."
Mermelstein, who was 11 when the war started and 15 when he was sent to Auschwitz, said a survivor can never shed the Holocaust's shadow.
"You cannot forget because when it comes to a holiday," there is always somebody missing, he said.
Statistical surveys are unable to capture a final changing aspect of survivors in the 21st century: survivors' increased need to leave behind a legacy.
"I think the focus of survivors after liberation was to start a new family immediately. Fifteen, 20 years ago they were working, raising families. Now the focus as they retire is the grandchildren who they are telling their story to because they realize time is of the essence," said Avi Mizrachi, executive director of the Holocaust Memorial Committee.
Unger recently brought his children to Poland to show them his home and to visit the mass grave where he thinks his parents are buried.
"It was hard," he said, choking back tears. But he said he wanted to close a chapter on his life there.
It wasn't until Sachs' granddaughter asked him to speak to her Holocaust class in college that he decided to volunteer to help needy Holocaust survivors and to speak about his Holocaust experience to student groups.
"As I left and said goodbye to her that day, I cried," he said.
After he returned to Florida, he "offered myself to do any kind of work as a volunteer," he added. "I am amply rewarded in all the work I do in seeing that the history of the Holocaust gets conveyed."
Ed Heisler clearly relishes the chance to share his experiences with children, as well as the responses his visits elicit.
"I get letters from these children," Heisler said, pulling a sheaf of papers from a folder. "They respond to different things."
"Dear Mr. Heisler," one letter began, "Thank you for the talk you gave our class on the war. It was really good. ... I thought it was awful that you weighed 75 pounds at one time, I'm glad that you had a nice guard." Another read: "I know it was hard for you to say your part, but think you are really a hero to do so. ... I know part of this story is my grandfather's along with millions of other Jews."
"My closing is always the same," Heisler said of his speaking engagements. "'If you start hating each other, for whatever reason, it will eat you up in the long run.'"
Heisler said after hearing him speak, "Kids tell me, 'Because you spoke to us, I am now looking at myself to see what I've been doing.'"
Although Heisler hasn't resumed his regular speaking schedule since moving to Phoenix from Burbank a little over a year ago, he has spoken to his great-nephew Zachary Taylor's class in Tempe, and to Zachary's youth group at the East Valley JCC.
"He's my agent," Heisler joked affectionately.
Asked whether he will speak to more schools in the Phoenix area, Heisler mentioned a recent incident in Goodyear: Four students from a local high school covered an electric snowman with racist slogans and symbols, including the German cross, and placed it outside the home of a black family.
According to Heisler, the mother of the family was so distraught that one of the perpetrators, upon reading about her response in the paper, felt moved to confess and apologize.
"I'm going to try and go to that high school," Heisler said, "and see if they're interested."
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