My dad and the Holocaust

Wood End Academy 2013

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steve-karmeinsky
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My dad went to school in Rosenberg Germany, the register on the wall said 17 boys, 12 girls and 1 jew. He was expelled after fighting back against local youths who tried to beat him up (one of which was the headmaster's son). He was sent to Breslau and went to an orthodox school, but was also kicked out. He then went to the local Gymnasium in about 1940, at this time his parents had also been expelled from Rosenberg and also went to the Ghetto in Breslau. Dad was kicked out of school in 1941 when it was closed down. In 1942 transports started "east to work", although called up his family were sent back again. In 1943 they were sent to Auschwitz where he lied about his age so he got allocated to a work crew. His mother and sister were sent straight to the gas chambers. He was in Auschwitz until 1945 and went on a death march (it took 2 days, out of the 60,000 people on the march, 15,000 died on it). 9 days later the Russians liberated (a mostly deserted) Auschwitz. He was then sent to Mittelwerks/Nordhausen and worked on testing V2 rocket engines under the supervision of Werner Von Braun. He was there for 3 months and was evacuated before the Americans liberated the camp. He was sent to Bergen Belsen (which was designed to hold 15,000 - when the British arrived and liberated the camp there were 53,000 inmates - they hand't had ANY food or clean water for at least 2 weeks). my dad survived by eating grass. He escaped with 5 other inmates (the camp was rife with typhoid and cholera) and made his was to Hannover were he got into a hospital and almost died. The other inmates waited until he's recovered and they made their way to Frankfurt to a DP camp where he applied to come to England where he knew he had a living relative, it took a year (and he worked as an ambulance driver for the US Army) and came over in 1946. He then rapidly took matriculation and did an electrical engineering degree in 2 years at Battersea Polytechnic. He then went to work for English Electric building guidance systems for missiles. He'd often be ushered out of meetings when US rocket scientists were visiting as they'd recognise him from Nordhausen. After 50 years he decided he'd been silent for long enough and set-up an organisation to get reparation for slave labourers and sued various German companies under the US Tort laws - which did lead to the German Government starting the reparation process. Though he disagreed with the process (no distinction between forced and slave labour) he couldn't complete his fight as he gotAlzheimer's. He died on 10th November 2008