Holocaust survivor shares memories

  • Published
  • By Tech. Sgt. Steven Wilson
  • 28th Bomb Wing Public Affairs
ELLSWORTH AIR FORCE BASE, S.D. --  Dr. Rudolph "Rudy" Jacobson, a child survivor of the holocaust in Europe shared his life-changing and historical experiences at a remembrance event here to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day.

Dr. Jacobson saw the holocaust through the eyes of a young boy in Germany and said he tells his story to ensure future generations don't forget this period in history.

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., 6 million Jewish people perished under the oppressive German Nazi regime when the Nazis came to power in January 1933.

"I never miss a chance to address the next generation of leaders," Dr. Jacobson said. "I was there. I saw everything I'm going to tell you about with my own eyes."

When the Nazis came to power, Jewish people were immediately singled out and made very aware they were no longer welcome in Nazi Germany.

"This is my [identification] card the Nazis gave me," Dr. Jacobson said. "I was only five -- you can see the big yellow 'J' they put in the middle of it to tell everyone I was a Jew."

He explained the Nazi government also "issued" him a middle name of "Israel" because he was male. Every Jewish male was given the middle name Israel by the Nazi government on their ID cards. Females were issued "Sarah" as their middle name.

This was the case for every Jewish person living in Germany at the time, whether they already had a middle name or not.

As Nazism grew, Jews weren't the only people inflicted with the horror of the holocaust.

As Germany attacked neighboring countries, beginning with Poland in 1939, the Web site dedicated to the holocaust memorial said Nazis began to target Gypsies, the disabled, people of Slavic origins, homosexuals and people with differing political, religious and ideological beliefs.

"Some people will say, to this very day, the holocaust never happened," Dr. Jacobson said, before a room of about 150 Airmen and civilians at the remembrance event. "But, I brought artifacts for everyone to see," as he indicated a display of personal affects to his immediate right of the speaker's podium. "Don't let anyone tell you it didn't happen."

To illustrate his point, Dr. Jacobson showed the audience a series of images displayed on a large projector screen in the room to accompany the items he brought, which included documents, passports, ID cards and additional photographs.

One photo showed a group of German students standing around a large bonfire of books. The books were piled in a pyramid and as they were consumed by the blaze, several of the students were rendering the Nazi salute.

"This picture was taken the day after I was born and just a few months after the Nazis came to power," Dr. Jacobson said.

Dr. Jacobson was an eyewitness to what historians now refer to as the "Krystallnacht," or Night of the Broken Glass.

"Krystallnacht was an organized oppression of Jewish people and their places of worship," said Ryan Warner, 28th Bomb Wing historian. "Nearly 267 synagogues were vandalized or burned, and approximately 90 Jewish citizens were murdered by Nazi fanatics."

Dr. Jacobson recalled his personal account of Krystallnacht during the remembrance event.

"On the night of Nov. 9, 1938, we were just sitting down to eat supper when a friend of the family ran in and said the synagogue was on fire," Dr. Jacobson said.

While he watched the building burn, Dr. Jacobson said he watched the Nazi "brown shirts," a paramilitary Nazi organization that helped Adolf Hitler rise to power, hurl bricks and other objects through the synagogue windows.

"That really made quite an impression on a 5-year-old boy," he said.

Dr. Jacobson told the assembled guests that the day after Krystallnacht, his stepfather was arrested without warning.

A local policeman and a Nazi came to the door and told his stepfather he had 10 minutes to pack a suitcase and leave, he said.

His stepfather was forced to leave behind his wife, 5-year-old Rudolph Jacobson and a 6-month-old infant as he was taken to a concentration camp.

Mr. Warner said the main vehicle for the horror of the holocaust was the some 20,000 concentration camps across Europe at the height of the terror.

"The term 'concentration camp' was coined because large numbers of prisoners of one type were 'concentrated' in one place," Mr. Warner said. "Camps were places of forced labor or as places of transit for shipping prisoners to other locations."

Mr. Warner said the forced-labor camps, although brutal and a place where many prisoners died of exhaustion and starvation, were not the most horrific.

Some met an even worse fate.

"There are documented cases of Nazi doctors performing medical experiments on live, human subjects," Mr. Warner said. "Some camps were specifically created for what the Nazis called the 'final solution' for Jewish people."

These camps, referred to historically as "extermination camps," were built so the Nazis could kill more efficiently.

"This was simply a case of mass genocide," Mr. Warner said. "One extermination camp, Auschwitz, gassed more than 6,000 people a day during the height of its operation."

Luckily, Dr. Jacobson's mother was able to secure passage to Cuba and show proof to the local Gestapo she and her family intended to leave Germany and never return. The Gestapo said her husband, Dr. Jacobson's stepfather, would be released in the spring.

"One day I was playing in the driveway and this man I didn't recognize walked up to me and called me by name," Dr. Jacobson said. "It was my stepfather. He left in November a vibrant, 36-year-old man and he returned in March a gray and stooped-over, old man because of (the concentration camp) Dachau."

The family could now leave the country, but they had to liquidate all their assets, which really meant giving them to the Nazis, Dr. Jacobson said.

His family sold all of their assets, placed the money in a German bank as the law required and were allowed to take the equivalent of $4 U.S. dollars with them for their voyage on a crowded refugee ship bound for Cuba.

When they arrived, the Cuban government reneged on their agreement with Germany and said they would only allow 30 refugees to disembark -- 907 remained aboard the vessel with no country to call home.

"[President Franklin Delano Roosevelt] refused to allow the refugees to land in America," said Dr. Jacobson, citing historical references he'd brought with him to the speaker's podium. "He was more interested in the 1940 election and his advisors told him if he violated the U.S.' isolationism policy and let the refugees in, he'd lose the election because we'd take American jobs.

"The Ku Klux Klan had a few million members and influence back then," he said. "They didn't like the Catholics, didn't like the blacks and didn't like the Jews -- I don't think they liked anybody."

It looked as if no one wanted the refugees, which could have been a major propaganda victory for the newly elected Nazi chancellor, Adolf Hitler.

"The Germans figured they'd made their point," Dr. Jacobson said. "No one wanted us, and Hitler ordered the ship back to Germany."

Eventually, several other European nations said they would help the 907 remaining Jewish people on the vessel. No one had to return to Germany, and Dr. Jacobson's family disembarked in Holland.

They eventually made their way to the United States in January 1940, through the help of a sponsor. Dr. Jacobson said his family settled in Wisconsin, and he started first grade knowing two words of English - "yes" and "no."

"But at least we were alive and free," he said to the crowd.

As Dr. Jacobson wrapped up his presentation, he showed the crowd one more photograph. It showed anti-Semitic graffiti on the wall of a synagogue.

In Colorado.

In 1988.

Dr. Jacobson cited this year's theme of holocaust remembrance, "What you do matters," to summarize his parting thoughts.

"I don't think my generation learned a thing," he said. "But you folks here -- you are our future leaders. Don't stand idly by when you hear one of those '-isms,' be it racism, anti-Semitism, or isolationism."

The official International Day of Holocaust Remembrance is April 11.

More information and photos are available at the U.S. Holocaust Museum's Web site at www.ushmm.org.