00:00:18.810 --> 00:00:20.228
Skokie, Illinois.

00:00:20.228 --> 00:00:23.481
It's just outside Chicago

00:00:23.481 --> 00:00:24.190
today.

00:00:24.190 --> 00:00:26.192
It's like any other big city suburb

00:00:27.610 --> 00:00:28.820
you wouldn't know it now.

00:00:28.820 --> 00:00:32.282
But back in the sixties and seventies,
my hometown

00:00:32.282 --> 00:00:35.660
was in the national spotlight.

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My name is Eli Adler.

00:00:37.704 --> 00:00:40.415
And this is where I grew up.

00:00:41.624 --> 00:00:43.084
Our family, me,

00:00:43.084 --> 00:00:46.504
my sister Paula and my parents lived at

00:00:46.504 --> 00:00:50.717
8209 North Harding Avenue, about a block
and a half from

00:00:50.717 --> 00:00:52.385
Skokie’s main drag.

00:00:53.219 --> 00:00:55.722
It was a small three-bedroom bi-level.

00:00:56.222 --> 00:01:00.852
They had a nice fenced-in yard
where the children

00:01:00.852 --> 00:01:03.104
who were very young at
the time, could play.

00:01:04.773 --> 00:01:07.108
Our family life seemed normal.

00:01:07.108 --> 00:01:10.361
Birthday
parties, barbecues and bicycle rides down.

00:01:10.361 --> 00:01:12.113
Dempster Street.

00:01:12.280 --> 00:01:15.366
But when I visited
my neighborhood buddies, I could tell

00:01:15.366 --> 00:01:18.703
there were things about my dad
that were different from theirs.

00:01:20.205 --> 00:01:21.748
And I would ask my dad

00:01:21.748 --> 00:01:25.001
why I don't have any grandparents
why don't I have any aunts or uncles.

00:01:25.543 --> 00:01:27.962
Why don’t I have any cousins.

00:01:28.296 --> 00:01:29.923
The older I got, the more

00:01:29.923 --> 00:01:32.258
I realized
there were secrets in our family.

00:01:33.051 --> 00:01:36.846
And discovering those secrets became
almost like an obsession to me.

00:01:38.473 --> 00:01:40.600
And something started to happen in Skokie.

00:01:40.850 --> 00:01:43.812
That not only affected
the lives of the people that lived there,

00:01:44.145 --> 00:01:46.439
but also had an impact all over the world.

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I didn't know it at the time.

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But my father's past

00:01:51.361 --> 00:01:53.571
was right in the middle.

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I grew up in Pabianice,

00:02:16.177 --> 00:02:19.305
a small town located about 15 kilometers

00:02:19.305 --> 00:02:22.433
south of  Lodz in central Poland.

00:02:23.351 --> 00:02:25.478
I had a large family there,

00:02:25.478 --> 00:02:29.065
my grandparents, two sisters
and a brother.

00:02:29.065 --> 00:02:31.276
And of course, my parents

00:02:33.945 --> 00:02:35.196
My family lived

00:02:35.196 --> 00:02:38.533
on Warshawska Street number 41

00:02:39.784 --> 00:02:42.287
in a comfortable apartment

00:02:42.287 --> 00:02:46.040
the type reserved for the upper middle
class of Poland.

00:02:46.040 --> 00:02:47.917
at that time.

00:02:48.668 --> 00:02:50.003
I loved our town.

00:02:50.003 --> 00:02:51.754
I loved my family.

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And had many friends.

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It was my home.

00:02:55.466 --> 00:02:57.135
It was all I knew.

00:02:57.135 --> 00:03:01.097
That is,
until the Nazi occupied Pabianice.

00:03:06.561 --> 00:03:08.980
Poland. September 1939,

00:03:09.856 --> 00:03:12.650
a German toll begins its ruthless
march of conquest

00:03:13.026 --> 00:03:15.612
and sets the stage for World War Two.

00:03:16.779 --> 00:03:18.907
I remember when the Nazis came and took

00:03:19.032 --> 00:03:20.116
Pabianice.

00:03:22.911 --> 00:03:25.330
like most ten year old boys.

00:03:25.330 --> 00:03:28.583
I was out
playing in the orchard behind my house.

00:03:29.375 --> 00:03:34.005
I had climbed my favorite tree
when I began to hear a very loud noise.

00:03:34.214 --> 00:03:37.425
Coming closer and closer.

00:03:37.425 --> 00:03:39.844
So I jumped down to the ground

00:03:39.844 --> 00:03:43.181
and I ran to this
street to see what was going on.

00:03:46.267 --> 00:03:47.352
There were trucks,

00:03:47.352 --> 00:03:50.855
big and loud,
German army trucks and motorcycles.

00:03:51.522 --> 00:03:55.568
And along with them was the Wermacht,
German soldiers.

00:03:56.861 --> 00:03:59.614
I was too young
to understand it at the time.

00:04:00.114 --> 00:04:04.452
But the Nazis were invading Poland,
and Pabianice, with its large

00:04:04.452 --> 00:04:08.122
Jewish population, was right
in the middle of their path.

00:04:10.333 --> 00:04:12.794
Then in February of 1940,

00:04:13.294 --> 00:04:16.839
the Nazis forced us all to move
into a ghetto

00:04:16.965 --> 00:04:20.301
in another part of town.

00:04:21.010 --> 00:04:23.554
It was hard for a youngster

00:04:23.554 --> 00:04:26.557
like myself to comprehend why

00:04:26.557 --> 00:04:31.771
just because I am Jewish, they moving
us to a certain section of the city.

00:04:31.813 --> 00:04:34.315
Why are they doing that?

00:04:34.399 --> 00:04:38.069
Even though the adults had an inclination
of what

00:04:38.403 --> 00:04:42.657
to expect more or less they wouldn't
share it with the youngsters.

00:04:43.741 --> 00:04:47.662
They didn't
want to instill a fear in myself.

00:04:47.662 --> 00:04:50.498
My siblings and others as well.

00:04:52.417 --> 00:04:54.544
But we could see the mistreatment.

00:04:54.961 --> 00:04:58.423
There was little food to eat,
no medical care.

00:04:58.840 --> 00:05:02.593
And as a result, disease ran rampant
throughout the ghetto.

00:05:04.762 --> 00:05:06.431
My grandfather,

00:05:06.431 --> 00:05:08.683
my mother and brother had died.

00:05:10.226 --> 00:05:12.061
All that was left of my immediate

00:05:12.061 --> 00:05:14.856
family was my father and two sisters,

00:05:16.149 --> 00:05:18.943
and things kept getting progressively
worse.

00:05:29.954 --> 00:05:33.249
Long before my dad safely
reached the Chicago suburbs.

00:05:33.666 --> 00:05:36.878
The city had seen waves of immigrants
from all over Europe,

00:05:37.420 --> 00:05:39.672
including a huge influx of Germans,

00:05:40.048 --> 00:05:42.759
both Gentiles and Jews.

00:05:42.759 --> 00:05:45.720
These groups made up a large part
of the local population

00:05:46.846 --> 00:05:49.599
and by the 1930s, each ethnic group

00:05:49.807 --> 00:05:52.393
had staked its claim
to particular neighborhoods.

00:05:53.770 --> 00:05:56.898
Skokie
had a historically Germanic population

00:05:56.898 --> 00:05:59.692
going back to the 19th century
before it was called Skokie.

00:05:59.984 --> 00:06:02.862
So much so that in the 1930s,

00:06:02.862 --> 00:06:07.033
the German Volksbund had marches down
the streets of Niles Center

00:06:07.325 --> 00:06:10.244
wearing their Nazi uniforms
and would end up

00:06:10.244 --> 00:06:13.289
at a tavern where there was a big picture
of Adolf Hitler on the wall.

00:06:15.166 --> 00:06:16.501
There was a

00:06:16.501 --> 00:06:21.047
Jewish group on the West Side,
Davie Miller's Pool Hall,

00:06:21.172 --> 00:06:24.467
where a lot of young
Jewish tough guys would hang out.

00:06:25.635 --> 00:06:29.430
He took his boys and they went
and they broke up

00:06:29.430 --> 00:06:34.352
some of these Nazi Bund meetings,
and they really beat them up.

00:06:35.770 --> 00:06:40.149
Although the elders frowned on what went on in
David Miller's pool hall,

00:06:40.400 --> 00:06:43.569
he served a purpose, actually,

00:06:51.661 --> 00:06:52.662
Meanwhile,

00:06:52.662 --> 00:06:55.957
the Nazis were continuing their march
across war torn Europe.

00:06:57.834 --> 00:06:59.836
Life for my dad in his family

00:06:59.836 --> 00:07:02.755
became even more frightening.

00:07:02.755 --> 00:07:04.674
In early 1942

00:07:04.674 --> 00:07:06.926
after two years in the Pabianice ghetto.

00:07:07.510 --> 00:07:10.012
They were shipped to a much larger
ghetto in Lodz.

00:07:15.184 --> 00:07:18.688
We spent 26 months in the ghetto of Lodz.

00:07:19.272 --> 00:07:22.358
It was even more crowded
than the ghetto in Pabianice.

00:07:23.901 --> 00:07:26.654
It was cold and overcrowded.

00:07:26.863 --> 00:07:31.367
And the unsanitary conditions
led to several epidemics.

00:07:33.411 --> 00:07:35.288
By 1944,

00:07:35.288 --> 00:07:38.166
the Nazis
had decided to liquidate the ghetto

00:07:43.754 --> 00:07:44.547
We were like

00:07:44.547 --> 00:07:47.717
the first few
to get into that particular car.

00:07:48.134 --> 00:07:49.469
So my father told us.

00:07:49.469 --> 00:07:52.555
Let's get in the corner
so we can have a little privacy.

00:07:53.306 --> 00:07:56.184
We didn't know they were going to pack it like sardines.

00:07:56.184 --> 00:07:57.560
in a can.

00:08:01.272 --> 00:08:02.773
We had no idea where

00:08:02.773 --> 00:08:04.400
we were going.

00:08:08.863 --> 00:08:09.697
When we arrived.

00:08:09.697 --> 00:08:12.658
what turned out to be Auschwitz-Birkenau.

00:08:12.658 --> 00:08:17.330
Besides the Nazis greeting us,
there were prisoners

00:08:17.497 --> 00:08:22.251
who came up to take away whatever
meager belongings one brought along.

00:08:22.251 --> 00:08:23.669
And there were Jewish prisoners.

00:08:23.669 --> 00:08:27.465
And they said to us
When you march, look strong.

00:08:27.507 --> 00:08:30.593
If you want to live,
straighten up when you march.

00:08:31.928 --> 00:08:36.307
because you just arrived to
the Auschwitz-Birkenau extermination camp.

00:08:37.600 --> 00:08:41.479
That's when we realized where we were at.

00:08:42.063 --> 00:08:42.772
He and his father

00:08:42.772 --> 00:08:46.901
spent ten days at Auschwitz
before being shipped off to Kaufering

00:08:47.193 --> 00:08:51.113
a subcamp of the Dachau concentration
camp in southern Germany.

00:08:54.033 --> 00:08:56.327
I was 15 years old and

00:08:56.327 --> 00:08:59.247
probably weighed a little more than 100 pounds.

00:09:00.581 --> 00:09:03.084
I had lost more than part of my family.

00:09:03.668 --> 00:09:05.753
I was losing my childhood.

00:09:05.753 --> 00:09:07.922
I didn't know what I was becoming

00:09:10.049 --> 00:09:12.385
I had spent the last four years

00:09:12.385 --> 00:09:15.263
in a ghetto or a concentration camp.

00:09:16.389 --> 00:09:19.642
No school, no friends, and no home.

00:09:21.269 --> 00:09:26.482
The whole camp
experience was so extraordinary,

00:09:26.482 --> 00:09:29.860
so primitive, so horrible

00:09:30.194 --> 00:09:33.739
that one can hardly conceive

00:09:34.365 --> 00:09:39.120
of what replaced the ordinary stuff
of growth and development

00:09:39.120 --> 00:09:42.665
during that period of time.

00:09:48.588 --> 00:09:52.925
By the spring of 1945,
there were rumors throughout Dachau

00:09:53.426 --> 00:09:55.886
that the Nazis were losing the war.

00:09:56.762 --> 00:09:59.348
The allied forces were close by.

00:09:59.682 --> 00:10:02.518
Now Nazi guards were becoming desperate

00:10:04.854 --> 00:10:08.649
in late April,
as the third and seventh army of the U.S.

00:10:08.649 --> 00:10:10.651
armed forces were closing in

00:10:12.653 --> 00:10:14.155
The Nazis decided to

00:10:14.155 --> 00:10:17.992
force 7000 prisoners,
including me, to march

00:10:17.992 --> 00:10:21.912
south away from Dachau
through neighboring towns.

00:10:23.289 --> 00:10:26.208
They now call it the Dachau death march

00:10:28.252 --> 00:10:29.545
I looked for my father

00:10:29.545 --> 00:10:32.506
among the other prisoners,
but couldn't find him.

00:10:33.674 --> 00:10:35.676
I later found out that he had died

00:10:35.676 --> 00:10:38.804
just two weeks earlier.

00:10:41.557 --> 00:10:43.392
We marched during the day.

00:10:43.392 --> 00:10:46.270
At night we would sleep in the woods, but

00:10:46.270 --> 00:10:48.856
they would take a group
to the other side of the woods.

00:10:49.398 --> 00:10:53.569
They were ordered to dig a ditch.
When the ditch was completed

00:10:53.569 --> 00:10:54.862
they were ordered to line up

00:10:54.862 --> 00:10:58.366
the perimeter of the ditch
and they were shot to death.

00:10:59.492 --> 00:11:01.994
The people I spoke to,
who had been on them.

00:11:02.411 --> 00:11:04.872
They had all given up.

00:11:04.955 --> 00:11:06.957
They didn't believe they would survive anymore.

00:11:07.875 --> 00:11:10.544
It was just a matter
of when their time would come.

00:11:12.254 --> 00:11:13.756
And they kind of got up and

00:11:13.756 --> 00:11:17.593
marched each day out of fear
of not doing it,

00:11:18.219 --> 00:11:22.723
just out of a certain
sort of automatic response.

00:11:23.766 --> 00:11:25.476
This is what we do.

00:11:27.395 --> 00:11:31.482
On May 1, 1945,
after four days of marching,

00:11:31.816 --> 00:11:35.319
we woke up to discover
that everything had changed

00:11:37.113 --> 00:11:38.197
I crawled over it.

00:11:38.197 --> 00:11:40.574
I asked, What's going on?

00:11:41.242 --> 00:11:42.410
They said, They all go home.

00:11:42.410 --> 00:11:43.786
I said, Who go to the killers?

00:11:43.786 --> 00:11:45.830
The SS disappeared

00:11:47.748 --> 00:11:49.250
and a few minutes later

00:11:49.250 --> 00:11:53.462
military tanks arrived
and they stopped in front of us.

00:11:53.796 --> 00:11:58.134
when they saw.
And one officer got on top of a jeep

00:11:58.509 --> 00:12:03.597
with a bullhorn and he announced,
This is the United States Army.

00:12:03.639 --> 00:12:05.349
You are all free.

00:12:05.349 --> 00:12:07.893
That's how we realized we were free.

00:12:09.311 --> 00:12:12.314
U.S. Army
medics brought my dad to a hospital

00:12:12.440 --> 00:12:15.484
in the Foehrenwald
displaced persons camp near Dachau.

00:12:16.569 --> 00:12:18.946
I was very sick. Very weak.

00:12:19.822 --> 00:12:23.242
When I was liberated, I weighed about 65 pounds.

00:12:24.160 --> 00:12:29.832
I had pneumonia
and suffered from malnutrition, of course.

00:12:29.832 --> 00:12:34.128
I remember in the morning
the doctors made their rounds

00:12:34.128 --> 00:12:36.589
and there was a chart
at the foot of the bed

00:12:37.548 --> 00:12:40.968
of the condition
of the patient. And I recall

00:12:40.968 --> 00:12:43.471
I could barely keep my eyes open,
but I recalled

00:12:43.471 --> 00:12:47.850
they would go into a little huddle
and I couldn't hear what they were saying,

00:12:48.309 --> 00:12:52.772
but when they walked away they would go
like this to the nurse, in other words.

00:12:52.897 --> 00:12:54.607
And I said, No way.

00:12:55.608 --> 00:12:57.151
I didn't come this far

00:12:57.151 --> 00:12:59.069
to give up now.

00:12:59.945 --> 00:13:02.948
Dad stayed in the Foehrenwald
h ospital for three months.

00:13:04.241 --> 00:13:05.993
After being released

00:13:05.993 --> 00:13:08.412
he remained there working for the U.N.

00:13:08.579 --> 00:13:12.583
and helping thousands of other refugees
who were looking for their families

00:13:12.958 --> 00:13:14.376
or somewhere to go.

00:13:14.376 --> 00:13:19.507
The International Red Cross
and the UNWRA, the United Nations

00:13:20.049 --> 00:13:24.178
compiled lists of
survivors throughout Europe.

00:13:25.721 --> 00:13:26.972
and those lists

00:13:26.972 --> 00:13:30.059
were posted,
in every displaced persons camp.

00:13:30.893 --> 00:13:33.479
And that's when I found out
I was the sole survivor

00:13:35.898 --> 00:13:36.941
I stayed in Foehrenwald

00:13:36.941 --> 00:13:40.778
for over a year. My family was gone

00:13:40.986 --> 00:13:44.406
and I had nowhere else to go.

00:13:44.406 --> 00:13:48.077
Eventually, a friendly worker
from the United Nations relief

00:13:48.077 --> 00:13:52.790
agency convinced me
that the best place to go was America,

00:13:53.374 --> 00:13:56.001
that they would help me
find the foster family

00:13:56.001 --> 00:13:58.212
to take me in.

00:13:59.004 --> 00:14:03.133
I was 16 years old.

00:14:06.595 --> 00:14:07.179
Dad was

00:14:07.179 --> 00:14:10.516
one of thousands
sent to the Prien am Chiemsee Orphans Center,

00:14:10.808 --> 00:14:13.811
not far from Foehrenwald.

00:14:14.645 --> 00:14:16.480
He waited there for a year

00:14:16.480 --> 00:14:21.193
until finally in November 1946,
he boarded the Marine Marlin

00:14:21.402 --> 00:14:24.905
for his voyage to America.

00:14:26.866 --> 00:14:30.494
We arrived to New York
and I saw the skyline.

00:14:30.494 --> 00:14:31.954
I saw a holes in the wall like...

00:14:31.954 --> 00:14:35.916
I said, I never saw a high rise
like this.  I didn't know it was a high rise.

00:14:37.751 --> 00:14:38.460
And the next

00:14:38.460 --> 00:14:40.754
day they took me to Ellis Island.

00:14:41.589 --> 00:14:44.300
I was in New York for almost a year.

00:14:45.676 --> 00:14:47.595
Then they shipped me to Chicago,

00:14:47.595 --> 00:14:50.681
where I lived in a foster home.

00:14:55.477 --> 00:14:57.688
This is Chicago.

00:14:57.688 --> 00:15:00.065
A great empire set
in the heart of America.

00:15:02.651 --> 00:15:05.487
By the time Dad reached the city in 1947,

00:15:05.946 --> 00:15:08.699
Chicago was still in the midst
of a population boom

00:15:10.242 --> 00:15:12.745
African-Americans had moved up
from the South,

00:15:13.787 --> 00:15:17.333
and European immigrants had fled from war
and destruction.

00:15:18.667 --> 00:15:20.669
Thousands of Holocaust survivors

00:15:20.836 --> 00:15:23.589
had found their way to Chicago.

00:15:24.465 --> 00:15:28.135
Like Dad, they too were beginning
their lives all over again.

00:15:29.678 --> 00:15:31.055
In effect.

00:15:31.055 --> 00:15:33.891
the survivors who came to America
and to Chicago

00:15:34.934 --> 00:15:36.226
had to survive again.

00:15:38.270 --> 00:15:39.855
Learn the language.

00:15:39.855 --> 00:15:41.273
Get a job.

00:15:41.273 --> 00:15:44.026
Find a wife, build a family,
and find a husband.

00:15:44.443 --> 00:15:47.571
They're doing that with carrying
this horrible trauma on their back.

00:15:48.781 --> 00:15:49.657
Mainly, they

00:15:49.657 --> 00:15:52.660
were dazed by what had happened to them

00:15:53.452 --> 00:15:57.206
and were simply trying
to find a way of living

00:15:58.123 --> 00:16:00.250
and to rediscover life.

00:16:03.837 --> 00:16:04.964
By that time,

00:16:04.964 --> 00:16:08.008
the Jews and worked their way up
economically.

00:16:08.926 --> 00:16:11.512
The trend was to have a home of their own

00:16:11.845 --> 00:16:14.181
and the government made it very easy

00:16:14.890 --> 00:16:17.351
with cheap loans

00:16:17.351 --> 00:16:20.187
for veterans and others to buy homes

00:16:21.480 --> 00:16:25.943
Most of them moved north into the Skokie area.

00:16:29.738 --> 00:16:31.448
Skokie was the perfect place.

00:16:31.448 --> 00:16:34.535
It was contiguous to the city of Chicago,

00:16:35.411 --> 00:16:39.707
so you could get down town to work
if that's where you worked.

00:16:40.499 --> 00:16:42.960
Housing was affordable here.

00:16:42.960 --> 00:16:45.713
If you scrape together your pennies
and you borrowed from your uncle,

00:16:45.713 --> 00:16:48.674
you just might be able
to get a down payment in Skokie.

00:16:49.842 --> 00:16:52.177
And then one told another
and another told another.

00:16:52.428 --> 00:16:53.971
And it was a great social movement.

00:17:04.064 --> 00:17:05.524
We had lived in a small

00:17:05.524 --> 00:17:08.277
apartment in Chicago after we got married,

00:17:09.862 --> 00:17:11.947
but we planned on having a family

00:17:12.489 --> 00:17:15.117
So when Eli was born, it made sense

00:17:15.117 --> 00:17:18.245
to move into a bigger home.

00:17:18.245 --> 00:17:21.790
By this time,
many of our friends had moved to Skokie

00:17:22.416 --> 00:17:24.501
and they encouraged us to follow.

00:17:25.294 --> 00:17:28.714
8209 Harding. Unbelievable.

00:17:28.714 --> 00:17:32.009
So we bought a three bedroom
home on Harding Street.

00:17:32.801 --> 00:17:34.762
It was perfect.

00:17:35.220 --> 00:17:36.346
He made his mind up.

00:17:36.346 --> 00:17:38.599
He was going to come to America,
and he did. He got here.

00:17:38.932 --> 00:17:43.771
He was shocked into finding out
how wonderful it was here.

00:17:43.771 --> 00:17:45.022
And life I think picked up for him.

00:17:45.022 --> 00:17:49.234
I think he realized that life could
could be better other than the camps,

00:17:49.234 --> 00:17:52.029
because that had to have a profound
influence on you.

00:17:52.571 --> 00:17:55.991
So this is it.  This was our first house in Skokie.

00:17:56.158 --> 00:17:58.660
Recently, Dad and I returned to the old house.

00:17:58.660 --> 00:18:01.455
By coincidence,
the family that had bought it from us

00:18:01.538 --> 00:18:04.625
was now selling it,
and they let us in to take a look.

00:18:05.125 --> 00:18:06.919
1959.

00:18:06.919 --> 00:18:08.754
We moved in here.

00:18:08.754 --> 00:18:09.254
Yeah.

00:18:09.254 --> 00:18:11.799
And this was the master bedroom Yeah.

00:18:13.217 --> 00:18:15.219
Unbelievable.

00:18:16.512 --> 00:18:19.223
Many, many pleasant memories.

00:18:19.723 --> 00:18:21.433
So this was my room yet?

00:18:21.433 --> 00:18:22.810
This was Paula's. Room, then?

00:18:22.810 --> 00:18:24.770
Yes, this was Paula's room.

00:18:25.479 --> 00:18:28.941
Neither of us had been back in the house
for nearly 50 years.

00:18:30.526 --> 00:18:33.403
I felt a sense of accomplishment

00:18:33.403 --> 00:18:35.697
being from where I came from.

00:18:36.990 --> 00:18:41.203
For Dad, our visit rekindled the moment
when he first started enjoying his life again.

00:18:42.579 --> 00:18:46.959
Making a home in Skokie
for his new family.

00:18:48.502 --> 00:18:51.964
The survivors were making a shtetl
in America.

00:18:52.214 --> 00:18:55.050
They were making a brick by brick,
storefront by storefront.

00:18:55.050 --> 00:18:57.052
Butcher shop by butcher shop.

00:18:57.052 --> 00:18:58.595
They were just doing what they knew
how to do.

00:18:58.595 --> 00:18:59.888
They were doing what they remembered.

00:18:59.888 --> 00:19:02.474
It was in their
their cultural memory of their childhood

00:19:02.641 --> 00:19:05.519
and their repeating it in this place
in the middle of America.

00:19:07.604 --> 00:19:10.149
The many
Holocaust survivors who moved to Skokie

00:19:10.566 --> 00:19:13.277
to comfort
and having neighbors with a shared past.

00:19:14.111 --> 00:19:16.572
But there was something hidden.

00:19:16.613 --> 00:19:19.992
No one else really knew how many survivors
had settled in town,

00:19:20.742 --> 00:19:22.786
and they weren't talking.

00:19:24.246 --> 00:19:27.040
I had taken my memories
and put them on the bottom of my

00:19:28.333 --> 00:19:29.168
brain.

00:19:29.334 --> 00:19:32.171
That to be taken out,
not to be examined again,

00:19:33.338 --> 00:19:35.591
and I didn't want to deal with my past.

00:19:35.591 --> 00:19:37.968
Never talk to my children about my past.

00:19:38.719 --> 00:19:40.637
My children were unaware.

00:19:40.637 --> 00:19:41.263
They knew.

00:19:41.263 --> 00:19:44.349
Obviously, the father had an accent.

00:19:44.349 --> 00:19:47.686
He was not an American, but they had no

00:19:48.103 --> 00:19:49.396
any detail

00:19:49.396 --> 00:19:52.149
the background of my

00:19:52.149 --> 00:19:55.444
being in on their concentration camp
coming from Europe.

00:19:55.861 --> 00:19:58.530
The Holocaust is there. It's always there.

00:19:59.031 --> 00:20:01.241
The slightest
thing brings you back to it.

00:20:01.575 --> 00:20:03.452
I thought all moms sat

00:20:03.452 --> 00:20:06.747
in the living room floor at night
when everybody's sleeping.

00:20:06.914 --> 00:20:08.790
Looking out the window, keeping vigil.

00:20:09.791 --> 00:20:11.293
The nightmares were always there.

00:20:12.628 --> 00:20:15.214
The days were easier.

00:20:15.505 --> 00:20:19.092
But if there was a touch, a smell,

00:20:19.927 --> 00:20:21.011
a word.

00:20:21.094 --> 00:20:22.554
Anything would bring it back.

00:20:23.722 --> 00:20:27.184
Sound of police sirens

00:20:28.894 --> 00:20:29.978
The air was crackling.

00:20:29.978 --> 00:20:32.856
I mean, it was a 1960s.
It was not just civil rights.

00:20:32.856 --> 00:20:35.609
it was the Democratic convention
in Chicago in 1968.

00:20:35.984 --> 00:20:38.028
It was the Hippies. The Yippies.

00:20:38.028 --> 00:20:41.490
It was as if Chicago was on fire in that era
in the 1960s.

00:20:41.490 --> 00:20:45.494
Come on.  I'm over here,

00:20:45.494 --> 00:20:48.121
Shoot to kill!  Come on.  Shoot to kill!

00:20:48.121 --> 00:20:53.961
Chicago became the hotbed of protest
and that came out of the civil

00:20:53.961 --> 00:20:57.381
rights movement because King chose Chicago

00:20:57.381 --> 00:20:59.299
to protest.

00:21:01.468 --> 00:21:03.345
music

00:21:03.345 --> 00:21:06.306
He then marched in Cicero,
marched in Marquette Park.

00:21:06.598 --> 00:21:08.892
Rocks were thrown.

00:21:08.892 --> 00:21:14.815
I feel.  Hey, I feel. Hey!

00:21:16.066 --> 00:21:20.529
When Dr. King came to Chicago and he had that
terrible response in Marquette Park,

00:21:21.196 --> 00:21:24.950
it really pulled the cover off of what
some people may have thought.

00:21:25.117 --> 00:21:28.787
A Midwestern
and one northern city was like,.

00:21:29.830 --> 00:21:32.708
Martin Luther King may have been surprised
by what he found.

00:21:33.375 --> 00:21:37.129
But many northern black leaders
had known for years that the Chicago

00:21:37.129 --> 00:21:40.465
suburbs of Cicero
and Berwyn were ground zero

00:21:40.841 --> 00:21:43.677
for racists and hate groups.

00:21:43.677 --> 00:21:48.432
That community
was the home of the Nazi Party.

00:21:48.765 --> 00:21:51.643
Their office was there
for the whole world to see.

00:21:52.394 --> 00:21:53.770
They had a storefront

00:21:53.770 --> 00:21:56.857
with all the stuff in their windows
and posters and all of that.

00:21:57.190 --> 00:22:02.446
Angry mob sounds

00:22:02.863 --> 00:22:04.489
The black folks marching in

00:22:04.489 --> 00:22:07.576
their community saw them
was their worst fear.

00:22:08.660 --> 00:22:10.996
It was like, well, here they really are.

00:22:10.996 --> 00:22:12.956
They really are coming.

00:22:12.956 --> 00:22:15.375
Let's go all the way down
to the lake and jump in.

00:22:15.834 --> 00:22:17.836
I don't want you in my neighborhood.

00:22:17.836 --> 00:22:23.175
And that mob mentality
that happens when more people gather.

00:22:24.051 --> 00:22:25.761
Well, this is a terrible thing.

00:22:25.761 --> 00:22:29.056
I've been in many demonstrations
all across the South,

00:22:29.806 --> 00:22:34.603
but I can say that I have never seen,
even in Mississippi and Alabama,

00:22:34.603 --> 00:22:39.983
mobs as hostile and as hate filled,
as I've seen in Chicago.

00:22:41.109 --> 00:22:47.657
Angry rantings.  And we will save the white race!

00:22:48.367 --> 00:22:50.619
Zeig Heil!

00:22:50.619 --> 00:22:52.162
My dad was upset

00:22:52.245 --> 00:22:54.998
when we would watch the news
and see these reports

00:22:55.165 --> 00:22:59.044
about the American Nazi Party
with George Lincoln Rockwell at the time.

00:23:00.128 --> 00:23:03.090
Whenever Rockwell would come on TV,
he would go, makes spitting sound

00:23:03.090 --> 00:23:06.426
you know,
it's like he'd just spit on them.

00:23:06.426 --> 00:23:08.470
Rockwell was killed by a disgruntled

00:23:08.470 --> 00:23:11.473
follower in 1967

00:23:11.473 --> 00:23:15.143
a former aide, Frank Collin,
then created his own organization,

00:23:15.435 --> 00:23:19.272
the National Socialist Party of America,
and based it in Chicago.

00:23:20.440 --> 00:23:23.819
Collin wanted to attract the same racists
and white power groups

00:23:24.069 --> 00:23:25.612
that had swarmed to Rockwell.

00:23:26.613 --> 00:23:28.365
So Collin’s neo-Nazis, set out

00:23:28.365 --> 00:23:31.743
to get more members
by getting more attention.

00:23:32.285 --> 00:23:33.495
This is our community.

00:23:33.495 --> 00:23:37.541
This is our neighborhood,
and we're going to keep it our neighborhood.

00:23:37.541 --> 00:23:41.211
There was a very fine line
between his personal ego

00:23:41.711 --> 00:23:45.215
in speaking it, getting on television
that he never turned down

00:23:45.882 --> 00:23:49.428
and promoting the cause.

00:23:49.678 --> 00:23:51.972
He was promoting Frank Collin.

00:23:51.972 --> 00:23:55.142
And the best thing I can say for you,
Frank, you're doing the wonderful job.

00:23:55.183 --> 00:23:56.768
Thank you very much sir really appreciate.

00:23:56.768 --> 00:23:59.229
Well, its just everybody here
its a real cooperative effort.

00:23:59.980 --> 00:24:02.065
There didn’t want the blacks
moving into their neighborhoods.

00:24:02.399 --> 00:24:04.234
There didn’t want blacks around them.

00:24:04.234 --> 00:24:06.319
So they had demonstrations against them.

00:24:07.446 --> 00:24:10.198
Naturally,
these haters broaden their horizons.

00:24:10.198 --> 00:24:13.034
Well, who's the easiest target in the world?

00:24:13.034 --> 00:24:13.952
The Jews.

00:24:13.952 --> 00:24:18.790
I’ll tell you what I gotta say. I hate Jews and I hate niggers,
and I want to live in my own white

00:24:18.790 --> 00:24:20.584
neighborhood by myself.

00:24:20.584 --> 00:24:22.127
But I just don't want to live by them.

00:24:22.127 --> 00:24:23.295
You understand
that?

00:24:23.462 --> 00:24:27.841
Their’s was a cult of exclusion. They want to keep everybody out.

00:24:27.841 --> 00:24:29.468
And that started with blacks.

00:24:29.468 --> 00:24:31.845
But to them the distinction
between blacks and Jews,

00:24:32.262 --> 00:24:34.222
I think, was almost indecipherable.

00:24:34.222 --> 00:24:37.184
It was almost indistinguishable.
They hated them equally.

00:24:39.186 --> 00:24:40.145
One Jewish group

00:24:40.145 --> 00:24:42.856
decided to fight back with their own
tactics.

00:24:43.482 --> 00:24:45.609
The JDL, the Jewish Defense League,

00:24:45.942 --> 00:24:50.197
was ready and willing to fight back,
and sometimes go further.

00:24:51.281 --> 00:24:54.743
Wherever and whenever Collin
and his followers held a rally,

00:24:55.368 --> 00:24:57.579
the JDL showed up to confront them.

00:24:58.872 --> 00:25:01.583
And here they came with Nazi flags,

00:25:01.917 --> 00:25:03.960
swastikas, brownshirts.

00:25:04.836 --> 00:25:09.049
Then Collin walked up to me and said,
Who are you?

00:25:09.883 --> 00:25:11.885
And I said, JDL

00:25:12.093 --> 00:25:15.222
Sounds of fighting

00:25:15.680 --> 00:25:17.349
caught them both in the throat.

00:25:17.349 --> 00:25:19.267
Knocked them both down.

00:25:19.267 --> 00:25:21.353
It was a hell of a fight.

00:25:21.686 --> 00:25:23.522
We licked the street up with them.

00:25:23.730 --> 00:25:26.900
sounds of aftermath of fight

00:25:27.192 --> 00:25:28.610
25 or 30 members

00:25:28.610 --> 00:25:33.114
of a ragtag Nazi party in Chicago
want to parade through Skokie.

00:25:33.990 --> 00:25:36.034
In January 1977,

00:25:36.326 --> 00:25:39.538
Collin
and the neo-Nazis decided to escalate the hate.

00:25:39.538 --> 00:25:40.580
Hate on the Negroes.

00:25:40.580 --> 00:25:42.749
They were targeting our town.

00:25:43.124 --> 00:25:46.169
voice of Frank Collin.  We decided that we would dramatize
the fact

00:25:46.169 --> 00:25:49.381
that First Amendment rights
for National Socialists have been denied.

00:25:49.631 --> 00:25:54.219
And the only way that could be done
was to force the issue in an area

00:25:54.219 --> 00:25:57.639
where the concept of white power
was most opposed.

00:25:57.847 --> 00:26:01.476
That being Skokie,
which has a large Jewish population.

00:26:02.602 --> 00:26:05.605
It is almost unimaginable,

00:26:06.398 --> 00:26:09.985
that a survivor who has gone
through the experience of the Holocaust

00:26:09.985 --> 00:26:11.861
and the camps...

00:26:11.861 --> 00:26:13.405
.... could find a safe place

00:26:13.905 --> 00:26:18.785
and suddenly have the word
Nazi uttered in their midst.

00:26:18.785 --> 00:26:22.372
And more than that,
the site of Nazi uniforms

00:26:22.372 --> 00:26:27.085
actually marching under the banner
of free speech,

00:26:27.419 --> 00:26:29.838
right down their streets. Unimaginable.

00:26:31.840 --> 00:26:36.261
The village of Skokie
first tried to stop the proposed march legally.

00:26:36.261 --> 00:26:41.016
It demanded a large liability
insurance policy and prohibited marchers

00:26:41.057 --> 00:26:44.644
from wearing Nazi uniforms
or displaying swastikas.

00:26:45.645 --> 00:26:48.398
Collin used the law, too.

00:26:48.398 --> 00:26:49.983
In a cynical ploy

00:26:49.983 --> 00:26:53.445
he obtained first amendment
counsel from the local ACLU

00:26:53.903 --> 00:26:56.406
made up mostly of Jewish attorneys.

00:26:56.406 --> 00:26:58.783
So they, too, became a target.

00:26:58.783 --> 00:27:02.537
The irony of this whole debate
was this band of 15

00:27:02.537 --> 00:27:06.374
or 20 misfits became consummate evil.

00:27:06.791 --> 00:27:11.796
And the ACLU, while it usually represents
the underdog, became the underdog.

00:27:13.340 --> 00:27:17.677
The uneasy connection that was forged
between the ACLU and the neo-Nazis

00:27:17.969 --> 00:27:22.057
did not prevent Collin from resorting
to predictable behavior and threats.

00:27:23.141 --> 00:27:27.312
Frank Collin
told David Goldberger, in my presence,

00:27:27.979 --> 00:27:30.523
don't think
just because you're representing me

00:27:30.815 --> 00:27:34.235
free of charge
that when we take over this country,

00:27:34.402 --> 00:27:37.822
you won't be the first one
to go to a gas chamber.

00:27:38.823 --> 00:27:41.117
As the case
slowly moved through the courts,

00:27:41.117 --> 00:27:44.454
many established Jewish leaders,
none of them survivors,

00:27:44.621 --> 00:27:47.457
stood firmly behind the city's
legalistic approach.

00:27:48.958 --> 00:27:51.086
Perhaps the best thing we could do

00:27:51.586 --> 00:27:53.588
would be to let them come.

00:27:54.214 --> 00:27:56.800
Make no effort to stop him.

00:27:56.800 --> 00:27:58.927
Give him no publicity.

00:27:58.927 --> 00:28:01.179
Turn our backs on him officially.

00:28:01.680 --> 00:28:03.306
Then be done it.

00:28:03.682 --> 00:28:05.892
And this is what some people did.

00:28:07.435 --> 00:28:12.774
Others said we're not going to allow them
freedom to become bullies again.

00:28:14.025 --> 00:28:16.695
Others were simply mystified.

00:28:16.695 --> 00:28:21.783
How can our nation allow this to happen?

00:28:21.783 --> 00:28:23.993
Dramaatic music

00:28:24.202 --> 00:28:26.830
I think it started in our synagogue
parking lot.

00:28:27.455 --> 00:28:29.124
People were here at services.

00:28:29.124 --> 00:28:32.419
They came back to their cars
and they found it leafletted

00:28:32.794 --> 00:28:34.587
with the leaflets saying.

00:28:34.587 --> 00:28:37.048
The Nazis are coming.

00:28:37.716 --> 00:28:41.344
Dad and the other survivors
knew that Collin and the neo-Nazis

00:28:41.553 --> 00:28:44.347
could make good on the threats
and march any time.

00:28:45.849 --> 00:28:49.436
But receiving this hate filled warning
felt like a physical blow.

00:28:50.353 --> 00:28:53.189
People were terrorized

00:28:53.189 --> 00:28:56.609
I don't think anyone fully appreciated

00:28:57.444 --> 00:29:01.197
the impact of what it would mean
for a Holocaust survivor.

00:29:01.698 --> 00:29:06.035
To have to come face to face
with the swastika one more time.

00:29:07.871 --> 00:29:10.123
They would suffer a resurgence

00:29:10.123 --> 00:29:14.252
of nightmares
that some of them hadn't had for years.

00:29:14.711 --> 00:29:17.922
They suffered the fear
that it was all happening again.

00:29:18.465 --> 00:29:21.092
They were going to single us out again.

00:29:21.092 --> 00:29:25.305
We have been singled out before,
and we were not going to stand for

00:29:25.305 --> 00:29:25.764
the second time.

00:29:26.014 --> 00:29:28.099
Angry mob sounds

00:29:28.308 --> 00:29:29.809
They were determined

00:29:29.809 --> 00:29:34.230
to keep Frank Collin and other Nazis with their black boots

00:29:34.230 --> 00:29:37.484
and the brown shirts and their swastikas
off the streets of Skokie.

00:29:38.902 --> 00:29:41.112
They wanted to make us miserable.

00:29:41.112 --> 00:29:43.156
They wanted to scare us.

00:29:43.156 --> 00:29:47.160
But they also were
the stimulus of the survivors

00:29:47.160 --> 00:29:51.873
getting together and saying, Hey,
we've got to do something.

00:29:52.332 --> 00:29:54.918
Some say, let's ignore them.

00:29:55.335 --> 00:29:57.587
Some said we cannot ignore them.

00:29:57.837 --> 00:30:01.090
Some said,
not only can we cannot ignore them.

00:30:01.090 --> 00:30:04.177
We have to take physical action
against them.

00:30:04.511 --> 00:30:05.220
Guys

00:30:05.220 --> 00:30:06.805
Let's  go! 

00:30:07.180 --> 00:30:08.848
Inictially our support came

00:30:09.015 --> 00:30:11.935
mostly from Holocaust survivors.

00:30:12.477 --> 00:30:17.357
They weren't real vocal about it
until the rabbis and Jewish leaders said

00:30:17.899 --> 00:30:20.985
pull the shades down, look the other way.

00:30:22.654 --> 00:30:24.823
I was disappointed that

00:30:24.823 --> 00:30:29.202
the establishment Jewish organizations
did not accept and embrace us.

00:30:29.953 --> 00:30:33.122
That's fine, but don't work against us.

00:30:33.122 --> 00:30:35.166
They called us Jewish Nazis.

00:30:35.166 --> 00:30:36.417
They called us terrorists.

00:30:36.417 --> 00:30:38.378
They called us gangsters.

00:30:38.711 --> 00:30:43.675
I was stunned by the response.

00:30:45.009 --> 00:30:47.679
My name is Frank Collin.  I am the party
leader of the National Socialist

00:30:47.679 --> 00:30:49.055
Party of America.

00:30:49.055 --> 00:30:51.474
I was born in Chicago on November 3rd.

00:30:51.474 --> 00:30:53.560
1944.

00:30:53.643 --> 00:30:58.731
Dramatic music

00:30:59.023 --> 00:31:01.568
One of the most hurtful things to me

00:31:02.277 --> 00:31:05.947
was when I found out that Frank Collin’s
father was a survivor.

00:31:06.531 --> 00:31:09.158
This is one of the most inexplicable,

00:31:09.158 --> 00:31:12.453
tragic facts of his

00:31:12.453 --> 00:31:14.163
arrival in this story.

00:31:15.582 --> 00:31:17.750
In a bizarre twist, it came out

00:31:17.750 --> 00:31:21.921
that Collin was the son of a German Jewish
survivor.

00:31:22.422 --> 00:31:26.885
in 1938, his father,
Max Cohen, was imprisoned in Dachau

00:31:27.260 --> 00:31:28.761
the same concentration camp.

00:31:28.761 --> 00:31:33.850
my father was eventually liberated
from seven years later.

00:31:34.934 --> 00:31:37.228
Luckily for Cohen, the Nazi government

00:31:37.228 --> 00:31:42.483
in the early thirties
was deporting Jews, not killing them.

00:31:43.151 --> 00:31:43.818
He emigrated

00:31:43.818 --> 00:31:47.614
to the United States in 1939
and settled in Chicago

00:31:47.614 --> 00:31:51.326
with his American wife
and eventually his son, Frank.

00:31:51.701 --> 00:31:55.496
We were in disbelief
that this is actually happening

00:31:55.580 --> 00:31:58.625
and coming from a Jewish boy.

00:31:59.208 --> 00:32:02.629
Frank Collin is a phenomenon,
an absolutely inverted phenomenon.

00:32:02.670 --> 00:32:07.050
A guy who has Jewish blood in him,
turns out to be a Jew hater.

00:32:07.300 --> 00:32:10.929
This guy had to be mentally
absolutely sick in his head

00:32:11.095 --> 00:32:14.682
and only a psychologist of Freud's
nature could understand him.

00:32:16.351 --> 00:32:17.727
With Collin,

00:32:17.727 --> 00:32:21.439
you see a picture which is very common

00:32:21.439 --> 00:32:25.193
with people who themselves feel defective

00:32:25.443 --> 00:32:28.988
who find themselves
some sort of an ideal

00:32:29.405 --> 00:32:32.116
in something that looks very powerful

00:32:32.408 --> 00:32:35.119
and therefore invulnerable.

00:32:35.828 --> 00:32:40.083
I can't imagine the pain of a father

00:32:40.625 --> 00:32:43.336
or a mother of having a child

00:32:44.420 --> 00:32:51.094
try to replicate one of the most horrible
times in human history.

00:32:51.344 --> 00:32:53.137
mob sounds

00:32:53.429 --> 00:32:55.598
So when
Collin's group threatened to picket,

00:32:55.932 --> 00:32:59.519
about 300 people turned out
for a counter-demonstration,

00:32:59.519 --> 00:33:02.563
ready to fight if necessary,
to keep the Nazis out.

00:33:02.689 --> 00:33:06.567
Death to the Nazis.  Death.  Death.  Death.

00:33:07.068 --> 00:33:08.528
It had been over a year

00:33:08.528 --> 00:33:12.073
since the fights, threats and lawsuits
had begun

00:33:12.615 --> 00:33:14.617
With hundreds of police present,

00:33:14.617 --> 00:33:17.620
Collin was to have his march.

00:33:17.620 --> 00:33:20.915
Holocaust survivors
and their supporters showed up early,

00:33:20.915 --> 00:33:24.752
many looking for a confrontation.

00:33:24.836 --> 00:33:27.296
Death!  Death to the f....ing Nazis!

00:33:27.630 --> 00:33:29.132
The level of emotion

00:33:29.132 --> 00:33:32.260
and energy was just in the air.

00:33:32.927 --> 00:33:35.304
The streets were lined with residents,

00:33:35.304 --> 00:33:39.225
survivors, Jews, non-Jews,
whoever they were who hated Nazis.

00:33:39.225 --> 00:33:40.309
They all lined the streets.

00:33:40.601 --> 00:33:43.896
There was
some of us that wanted him to come

00:33:44.188 --> 00:33:46.149
because we wanted to beat the crap
out of them.

00:33:48.234 --> 00:33:51.738
I remember throwing
my shotgun in the car.

00:33:52.989 --> 00:33:53.865
I kept on saying to myself

00:33:53.865 --> 00:33:56.534
this was never going to happen again.

00:33:57.702 --> 00:34:00.830
Mayor Smith came out on the steps
of the village hall at the time,

00:34:01.080 --> 00:34:04.917
and he said, We got a court order
preventing the Nazis from coming today.

00:34:05.251 --> 00:34:07.754
And everybody started cheering.

00:34:07.754 --> 00:34:10.506
He said, When they arrive,
we want everybody to step on the side.

00:34:10.506 --> 00:34:12.759
let the police arrest them
and remove them from the city.

00:34:12.759 --> 00:34:15.094
And everybody started screaming,
No, no, no, no.

00:34:19.057 --> 00:34:21.184
There was a significant different,

00:34:21.184 --> 00:34:23.895
smaller group out there
that caught my attention.

00:34:24.312 --> 00:34:29.817
and that was a group of survivors
who didn't yell, didn't shake their fist,

00:34:30.318 --> 00:34:32.653
didn't swear at anybody.

00:34:32.653 --> 00:34:37.241
shaking, some almost violently

00:34:37.617 --> 00:34:39.452
Frank Collin knew

00:34:39.452 --> 00:34:42.663
that by simply threatening
to show up in Skokie,

00:34:42.872 --> 00:34:47.168
he would tear the scab off the wound
that these people

00:34:47.752 --> 00:34:52.965
had suffered and born for over 30 years.

00:34:55.510 --> 00:34:56.135
The mayor

00:34:56.135 --> 00:34:59.097
went back into his office
and he must call the state police.

00:35:00.014 --> 00:35:04.102
They pulled the Nazis off the highway at Touhy, which is the border of Skokie.

00:35:04.102 --> 00:35:07.647
And they turned them around
and sent them back to the South Side.

00:35:08.773 --> 00:35:12.235
Collins band of neo-Nazis made it clear
they weren't giving up.

00:35:12.944 --> 00:35:16.989
Over the next year, Skokie leaders
Harvey Schwartz, Al Smith and others

00:35:17.281 --> 00:35:21.035
obtained injunctions
and passed a series of ordinances

00:35:21.244 --> 00:35:23.746
in an attempt
to prevent a march in Skokie.

00:35:25.414 --> 00:35:27.875
But the ACLU and Collin fought back.

00:35:27.875 --> 00:35:29.085
In the courts.

00:35:29.085 --> 00:35:32.755
Winning four key decisions
that overturned all the Skokie laws.

00:35:34.048 --> 00:35:36.759
We strongly disagree with today's decision

00:35:38.219 --> 00:35:42.181
and we are morally, ethically
and legally bound to take every recourse

00:35:42.598 --> 00:35:43.766
at our disposal.

00:35:44.100 --> 00:35:46.185
Keep the line straight.

00:35:46.811 --> 00:35:49.188
Collin
and his group had been bloodied and beaten

00:35:49.188 --> 00:35:53.442
by members of the
JDL for more than six years.

00:35:53.985 --> 00:35:57.488
Though they were legally entitled
to proceed with their planned march,

00:35:57.488 --> 00:36:00.658
Collin had decided he'd had enough.

00:36:00.658 --> 00:36:02.076
So he accepted a US

00:36:02.076 --> 00:36:06.664
Justice Department plan
to relocate the march outside of Skokie.

00:36:06.664 --> 00:36:07.665
dramatic music

00:36:07.665 --> 00:36:11.794
No one was going to get through the line of State Police.

00:36:12.753 --> 00:36:17.800
with riot helmets and batons and stun guns,
mace whatever the hell they had.

00:36:18.342 --> 00:36:21.846
It would have been a terrible day
in Skokie.

00:36:22.847 --> 00:36:24.515
voice of Frank Collin;   I have decided.

00:36:24.515 --> 00:36:27.643
That the demonstration
scheduled for Sunday

00:36:27.643 --> 00:36:30.730
in Skokie is henceforth canceled.

00:36:30.938 --> 00:36:34.942
The rally is in the park, so we're not
going to march from here.  We’ll see you in the park.

00:36:34.984 --> 00:36:36.694
White Power!

00:36:39.822 --> 00:36:41.407
They can’t even see us.

00:36:41.699 --> 00:36:43.784
Look at this pathetic situation here.

00:36:43.784 --> 00:36:45.119
Look at this.

00:36:45.328 --> 00:36:47.413
They lied as usual.

00:36:47.413 --> 00:36:50.541
Things seemed to be falling apart for Collin.

00:36:50.875 --> 00:36:52.084
Your loudspeaker system.

00:36:52.084 --> 00:36:54.712
If it's loud enough, they can
certainly hear you.  Well they can't even see us.

00:36:54.712 --> 00:36:56.005
I was told we’d be in front of the trees.

00:36:56.005 --> 00:36:59.091
not behind them.  Well,  I'm sorry.
This is the agreement  you got.

00:36:59.467 --> 00:37:02.553
Why did Frank Collin fight for two years

00:37:02.803 --> 00:37:06.766
to reaffirm the right to march in Skokie
and then not march?

00:37:06.974 --> 00:37:10.937
Why would you leave the stage
before the final act of the opera?

00:37:10.978 --> 00:37:13.648
Why would you do that? One word fear.

00:37:14.232 --> 00:37:16.776
That will stop
is because we love you so much.

00:37:17.151 --> 00:37:18.736
We love your children.

00:37:18.736 --> 00:37:19.695
Your youth.

00:37:19.695 --> 00:37:22.406
But the bottom line
is, Collin was fearful for his life.

00:37:23.532 --> 00:37:24.367
He knew that

00:37:24.367 --> 00:37:26.661
had he come to Skokie,
he would have been carried out.

00:37:27.370 --> 00:37:30.039
And that's what prevented him
and his gang from coming to Skokie.

00:37:32.583 --> 00:37:35.461
So after 18 months
of this threatened march

00:37:36.128 --> 00:37:38.798
everybody expected it to end with a bang,

00:37:39.924 --> 00:37:42.802
but just ended with a little whimper.

00:37:43.594 --> 00:37:47.390
It was building up to this flashpoint
that never happened.

00:37:47.765 --> 00:37:49.141
Greatly appreciate you stopping by.

00:37:49.350 --> 00:37:52.561
Collin obviously
had hoped the months of threats and fights

00:37:52.895 --> 00:37:55.648
would grow his neo-Nazi party,

00:37:56.065 --> 00:37:59.068
but exactly the opposite happened.

00:37:59.068 --> 00:38:02.530
He had awoken the sleeping giant

00:38:02.530 --> 00:38:05.366
and many of the Skokie survivors
banded together

00:38:05.533 --> 00:38:09.620
to create a museum
right in their hometown.

00:38:10.371 --> 00:38:13.958
Today, the Illinois
Holocaust Museum and Education Center

00:38:14.333 --> 00:38:16.627
reaches out to millions of young people.

00:38:17.753 --> 00:38:21.132
Those of us that have been involved from
the beginning

00:38:21.132 --> 00:38:25.428
are just so proud of this museum
and what we have done.

00:38:25.553 --> 00:38:28.889
Our audience are our messengers,

00:38:29.056 --> 00:38:31.600
and we
try to impress on them that they are

00:38:32.101 --> 00:38:34.687
the messengers of a time that us, we

00:38:34.687 --> 00:38:37.857
as survivors, will never see.

00:38:38.232 --> 00:38:40.776
So our hope is in them.

00:38:41.527 --> 00:38:43.529
And that's why we do what we do.

00:38:45.364 --> 00:38:47.116
I was born in Poland.

00:38:47.116 --> 00:38:49.243
In the city of Pabianice, Poland.

00:38:49.785 --> 00:38:52.038
Population about 55,000.

00:38:52.455 --> 00:38:54.290
Having moved from Skokie.

00:38:54.290 --> 00:38:57.001
Dad took a somewhat different path.

00:38:57.418 --> 00:39:01.756
It wasn't until the mid-90s
that he decided to confront his past.

00:39:03.132 --> 00:39:07.094
He began traveling the country,
appearing on TV shows

00:39:07.303 --> 00:39:11.223
and speaking to students, civic groups
and the military.

00:39:11.807 --> 00:39:15.770
TV show intro music

00:39:16.145 --> 00:39:17.730
Let's talk with Jack Adler.

00:39:17.730 --> 00:39:18.439
Thanks for coming...

00:39:18.439 --> 00:39:22.985
Dad always said that he had no desire
to return to Poland, ever.

00:39:22.985 --> 00:39:26.864
The core of anti-Semitism
in Poland is alive and well,

00:39:27.073 --> 00:39:29.700
and I have no desire
to go back to such place.

00:39:30.117 --> 00:39:34.663
Then out of the blue, he called one day
with the most unexpected request.

00:39:36.457 --> 00:39:38.250
After all these years,

00:39:38.250 --> 00:39:42.338
Dad said he wanted to find
the final resting place of his family.

00:39:42.880 --> 00:39:45.633
He needed to return to Pabianice.

00:39:45.633 --> 00:39:48.928
And he wanted me to come with him.

00:39:50.012 --> 00:39:52.264
I never in my wildest dream

00:39:52.681 --> 00:39:56.310
could I have imagined to come back,

00:39:56.769 --> 00:39:59.605
especially with my son.

00:39:59.605 --> 00:40:02.233
This used to be a school,
a Jewish school, right here.

00:40:02.233 --> 00:40:07.780
I had just really wanted
to experience his life in this small town.

00:40:07.780 --> 00:40:09.198
Pabianice.

00:40:09.698 --> 00:40:11.826
And he wanted to show it to me.

00:40:11.826 --> 00:40:14.328
So you’re home.

00:40:14.829 --> 00:40:16.831
My used to be home. Yes.

00:40:18.416 --> 00:40:21.627
It was not exactly what I thought
Pabianice would be like.

00:40:22.420 --> 00:40:25.339
It seemed small and a bit rundown.

00:40:26.924 --> 00:40:28.676
The town looks like it hasn't changed

00:40:28.676 --> 00:40:33.013
much since the days
when it was overrun by a Nazi invasion.

00:40:33.264 --> 00:40:39.854
Speaking Polish

00:40:40.146 --> 00:40:44.775
There were 83 Adlers in Pabianice.
They owned the town.

00:40:44.775 --> 00:40:47.778
They had this big textile business
going on.

00:40:47.778 --> 00:40:48.487
Yeah.

00:40:48.696 --> 00:40:52.116
These were stories that I heard,
but I really wanted to see them

00:40:52.408 --> 00:40:54.368
because I didn't have any photographs.

00:40:54.368 --> 00:40:56.370
I didn't have any imagery.

00:40:56.829 --> 00:41:01.459
You know, I was able to create the imagery
by being there with him.

00:41:01.625 --> 00:41:02.334
They tried to

00:41:02.334 --> 00:41:06.046
run after the streetcar, tried  to hang on...

00:41:06.338 --> 00:41:08.591
And my grandmother would be on the balcony.

00:41:08.591 --> 00:41:10.509
that little thing outside.

00:41:10.843 --> 00:41:14.138
chuckling

00:41:15.222 --> 00:41:18.517
When I came with my son
to Pabianice,

00:41:18.517 --> 00:41:24.023
was like,
I see a movie of my entire loving family

00:41:24.190 --> 00:41:27.735
and I could see everyone's face so clear.

00:41:28.194 --> 00:41:30.070
It was something like,

00:41:30.070 --> 00:41:33.240
you come out of a dream and here,

00:41:33.491 --> 00:41:36.577
the dream is over
and you see all your loved ones

00:41:36.577 --> 00:41:37.912
all over again.

00:41:44.627 --> 00:41:46.337
Is this open?

00:41:49.423 --> 00:41:50.841
they used to have a light

00:41:50.841 --> 00:41:53.594
on 41 with my grandfather's name.

00:41:56.263 --> 00:41:57.973
Oh, my God.

00:41:57.973 --> 00:41:59.683
Oh, my god....

00:42:01.018 --> 00:42:07.650
crying under breath

00:42:11.195 --> 00:42:14.240
Those memories were so clear to me.

00:42:14.240 --> 00:42:16.450
I couldn't believe it.

00:42:17.576 --> 00:42:20.704
I cannot see most of those faces
any longer.

00:42:21.205 --> 00:42:24.458
But when I walked in that place,
I could see them all.

00:42:25.292 --> 00:42:27.461
You know, you see. Can you see?

00:42:27.753 --> 00:42:31.090
It was an apple orchard, you know,
they blocked it off...

00:42:32.800 --> 00:42:35.052
We were invited into the apartment

00:42:35.052 --> 00:42:38.514
that my father lived in as a kid
before the war.

00:42:38.847 --> 00:42:44.853
speaking Polish

00:42:49.191 --> 00:42:52.736
speaking Polish

00:42:52.987 --> 00:42:57.408
They were very friendly.  They offered us tea and cookies
and we sat and talked for about an hour.

00:42:57.825 --> 00:43:00.286
In 1939, when the Germans came.

00:43:00.578 --> 00:43:05.332
You could see his mind
just start opening up these memories.

00:43:05.916 --> 00:43:09.461
That he was unaware of for 70 years.

00:43:09.753 --> 00:43:12.006
Started to come back once
he was in that place.

00:43:13.090 --> 00:43:20.306
speaking Polish

00:43:20.472 --> 00:43:22.766
The visit seemed to rejuvenate him.

00:43:22.766 --> 00:43:25.185
Especially when we went on to the deck.

00:43:26.353 --> 00:43:32.401
our host told him that the neighborhood
hadn't changed much in the past 70 years.

00:43:33.986 --> 00:43:37.573
I remember all the places I used to go
and play.

00:43:38.282 --> 00:43:40.951
I could see the park, the church

00:43:40.951 --> 00:43:45.831
across the street,
even where my cousins used to live.

00:43:48.167 --> 00:43:50.294
It meant so much to me.

00:43:50.294 --> 00:43:53.380
to be in the old neighborhood.

00:43:53.672 --> 00:43:57.593
To know
that the apartment was still there,

00:43:57.801 --> 00:44:01.847
I used to slide down here.

00:44:02.765 --> 00:44:06.018
He said don’t.  Laughing

00:44:06.268 --> 00:44:10.272
This was easy.  Here I had a problem
because they're it was against the wall.

00:44:11.273 --> 00:44:12.900
But this was easy.

00:44:12.900 --> 00:44:16.278
I'll never forget when we left the place,
after we said goodbye to the people,

00:44:16.445 --> 00:44:18.238
he was like a new man.

00:44:18.238 --> 00:44:20.699
He was so excited. Oh, yeah. This was.

00:44:21.325 --> 00:44:24.161
It was pretty.

00:44:27.122 --> 00:44:30.959
I never heard those stories before,
and I think it took going to Pabianice

00:44:31.001 --> 00:44:33.128
to get those stories from him.

00:44:33.420 --> 00:44:45.724
wistful music

00:44:46.058 --> 00:44:49.561
I haven't been there since 1940.

00:44:49.603 --> 00:44:52.398
When we were all moved into the ghetto

00:44:52.648 --> 00:44:55.234
and to the ghetto
where we lived. The building

00:44:55.234 --> 00:44:57.403
I took my son to it.

00:44:58.237 --> 00:45:01.323
From out here
point to the apartment that you were in.

00:45:01.865 --> 00:45:02.324
Let's see

00:45:03.909 --> 00:45:06.036
It was the top one right here.

00:45:06.036 --> 00:45:07.162
The top one.

00:45:07.162 --> 00:45:08.997
Let's see one, two windows.

00:45:08.997 --> 00:45:11.500
So it would be this and that.

00:45:12.793 --> 00:45:16.672
The ghetto courtyard
looked exactly the same as he remembered.

00:45:17.172 --> 00:45:20.884
He was only ten years old
then and was already thinking of ways

00:45:20.884 --> 00:45:25.514
to save his father
from slave labor and torture by the Nazis.

00:45:25.514 --> 00:45:28.350
I would tell my father
to get in the laundry basket,

00:45:29.184 --> 00:45:31.437
covered the laundry
because they wouldn't touch.

00:45:32.020 --> 00:45:32.730
Dirty laundry.

00:45:32.730 --> 00:45:36.108
And then they wouldn't
they didn't know anyone was in there.

00:45:36.108 --> 00:45:38.610
It was a high laundry basket.

00:45:39.319 --> 00:45:43.824
These kinds of stories
were a daily occurrence in the ghetto.

00:45:44.366 --> 00:45:45.492
The one thing I remembered

00:45:45.492 --> 00:45:48.620
the most was the people who lived there.

00:45:49.163 --> 00:45:51.331
We became a community here,

00:45:51.331 --> 00:45:54.251
sharing in the hardships we experienced

00:45:58.839 --> 00:46:02.593
I remember the faces of neighbors, people

00:46:02.593 --> 00:46:06.513
who lived, packed in this building
like sardines.

00:46:07.139 --> 00:46:10.976
We had initially one room for six people.

00:46:11.185 --> 00:46:15.355
And it was just too, too painful for him.

00:46:15.689 --> 00:46:18.734
And I felt his pain,
you know, when he was reliving the story

00:46:19.109 --> 00:46:22.029
about how his brother died
there, his mother died there.

00:46:22.029 --> 00:46:24.281
His grandfather died there.

00:46:25.449 --> 00:46:27.367
Two years after the war started.

00:46:27.367 --> 00:46:31.872
It was that much hunger and disease
and mistreatment

00:46:31.872 --> 00:46:36.376
that half of his family died
during that time.

00:46:36.668 --> 00:46:43.008
And here we lived till May 16, 1942
when they took us on the march

00:46:43.008 --> 00:46:47.471
to the soccer field.

00:46:50.766 --> 00:46:52.976
As we left the ghetto courtyard.

00:46:52.976 --> 00:46:55.437
Dad told me a story
about an act of bravery

00:46:55.729 --> 00:46:57.481
I had never heard before.

00:47:00.901 --> 00:47:04.905
On that cold and rainy morning in May,
the Nazis had told

00:47:04.905 --> 00:47:08.408
the prisoners to assemble in the
streets outside the ghetto.

00:47:10.160 --> 00:47:14.540
6,000 men, women and children were marched
several blocks

00:47:14.832 --> 00:47:18.043
and gathered at a soccer field
near the center of town.

00:47:22.548 --> 00:47:26.593
Over the next two days,
they were beaten, tortured and humiliated

00:47:26.844 --> 00:47:29.638
by cruel Nazi guards.

00:47:30.389 --> 00:47:31.682
On the second day,

00:47:31.682 --> 00:47:33.517
they were divided into two groups.

00:47:34.685 --> 00:47:37.271
Group A would be sent to be slave laborers

00:47:37.271 --> 00:47:38.689
at the Lodz ghetto.

00:47:40.357 --> 00:47:43.527
And group B, made up mostly of older
people and children

00:47:44.111 --> 00:47:47.447
were immediately
sent to the Chelmno death camp.

00:47:47.739 --> 00:47:51.451
Dad's grandmother was sent to Chelmno that day

00:47:53.745 --> 00:47:55.873
Today, the place is much different.

00:47:56.415 --> 00:47:59.710
Large apartment buildings
now sit where once the prisoners

00:47:59.710 --> 00:48:03.088
were forced to stand for hours and hours.

00:48:04.214 --> 00:48:06.341
Dad hardly recognized it.

00:48:06.341 --> 00:48:11.346
Trees, bushes and busy streets
have overrun the field now.

00:48:12.306 --> 00:48:17.144
A few old buildings still remain
in this place of unbearable sadness.

00:48:17.728 --> 00:48:19.730
Where Dad's little sister Peska stood

00:48:20.272 --> 00:48:23.525
waiting to be sent to Chelmno.

00:48:23.859 --> 00:48:28.113
They had a lot of debris left behind by
those who were shipped out from group A.

00:48:28.113 --> 00:48:31.158
Dad told me that as darkness
was approaching

00:48:31.617 --> 00:48:34.661
the Nazis asked for volunteers
to pick up debris

00:48:34.870 --> 00:48:37.247
left by those from group B.

00:48:37.873 --> 00:48:40.626
Dad thought by volunteering
there might be a chance

00:48:40.626 --> 00:48:43.253
he could find Peska before
she was taken away.

00:48:44.129 --> 00:48:48.759
So we found an old baby stroller,
went to the area where those still left in Group B

00:48:48.759 --> 00:48:52.554
were waiting
and began to look for his little sister.

00:48:54.765 --> 00:48:56.058
And when they got close enough

00:48:56.058 --> 00:48:58.894
towards group B
it was dark in the field.

00:49:00.687 --> 00:49:04.399
I started calling Peska's name out.

00:49:05.233 --> 00:49:07.277
And to my surprise, she was still there.

00:49:07.277 --> 00:49:09.905
She came running toward me,
frightened, crying.

00:49:09.905 --> 00:49:13.325
I told her not to get too close
and wait until it's dark again.

00:49:14.159 --> 00:49:17.412
And then if you can try
to get into the baby carriage.

00:49:17.412 --> 00:49:19.706
And she did so.

00:49:20.332 --> 00:49:24.670
And I slowly moved from group B toward group
A back where my father

00:49:24.670 --> 00:49:28.632
and older sister Etka were waiting to hear from us.

00:49:29.091 --> 00:49:32.719
And they got her out of the baby carriage.

00:49:34.513 --> 00:49:35.931
As if on cue,

00:49:35.931 --> 00:49:39.226
a reminder of the madness of that era
suddenly appeared

00:49:40.394 --> 00:49:42.062
as we were about to leave.

00:49:42.062 --> 00:49:45.524
an old man
stumbled over to where we were standing.

00:49:46.566 --> 00:49:47.901
He lived in one of those Russian

00:49:47.901 --> 00:49:50.779
looking apartments
that had been built after the war.

00:49:51.780 --> 00:49:54.783
And apparently he had come out to ask us
why we were filming,

00:49:54.908 --> 00:49:58.412
to stop recording, and suggested
we leave immediately.

00:49:58.412 --> 00:50:07.546
Speaking Polish

00:50:08.130 --> 00:50:11.466
Obviously, he either did not know
what happened there during the war

00:50:12.217 --> 00:50:15.929
or he knew and just did not want
people to know the truth.

00:50:16.805 --> 00:50:19.725
This is...    Tell him

00:50:19.725 --> 00:50:22.185
This is a sacred place for us.

00:50:22.436 --> 00:50:26.982
Speaking Polish
We have more right  to be here than you!

00:50:28.692 --> 00:50:31.528
I'm not sure why I got so upset that day.

00:50:31.778 --> 00:50:33.697
I didn't understand the old man.

00:50:33.697 --> 00:50:36.408
Maybe it was a story of Peska.

00:50:36.700 --> 00:50:39.369
Or perhaps
I was just being protective of my dad.

00:50:40.871 --> 00:50:44.207
But for those few minutes,
I think I had some idea

00:50:44.207 --> 00:50:48.336
what it must have been like
to be Jack Adler at 12 years old,

00:50:48.587 --> 00:50:52.674
in that cold and mean place
at that terrible time.

00:50:55.385 --> 00:50:58.180
The memory that he had in this place

00:50:58.597 --> 00:51:03.810
was so powerful and poignant and sad

00:51:04.436 --> 00:51:07.564
I almost felt uncomfortable
being there with him

00:51:07.564 --> 00:51:11.610
because I knew how much, how much pain
was associated with that place.

00:51:17.866 --> 00:51:20.410
I took Eli to the Jewish cemetery

00:51:20.911 --> 00:51:23.038
just outside town.

00:51:24.664 --> 00:51:26.333
Dad was looking for the graves

00:51:26.333 --> 00:51:32.005
of his grandfather, mother or brother,
those who had perished in the Pabianice ghetto.

00:51:33.548 --> 00:51:39.513
I think it was his way of trying
to connect me with the family I never knew.

00:51:39.888 --> 00:51:43.809
Sadly, there were no Adler family members
buried there,

00:51:44.226 --> 00:51:48.480
Only overgrown weeds and long neglected gravestones.

00:51:49.689 --> 00:51:50.982
I didn't know

00:51:50.982 --> 00:51:55.487
that all those who died in the ghetto
during war time

00:51:55.654 --> 00:51:58.782
were buried in their mass grave like

00:51:59.866 --> 00:52:02.869
Therefore,
I realized why I couldn't find anything

00:52:02.869 --> 00:52:06.373
of my mother, brother or grandfather.

00:52:15.257 --> 00:52:18.301
Those of us who survived the ghetto in Pabianice

00:52:18.301 --> 00:52:21.721
were immediately
sent to the ghetto of Lodz

00:52:22.848 --> 00:52:24.850
We went by a street car,

00:52:24.850 --> 00:52:31.606
and I remember how fearful I felt
as I sat with my father and two sisters.

00:52:33.733 --> 00:52:38.738
We lived in a crowded apartment
surrounded by dozens of families.

00:52:38.738 --> 00:52:42.742
It had no heat or plumbing,
and the only furniture there

00:52:42.742 --> 00:52:45.245
were two beds and a cabinet.

00:52:46.288 --> 00:52:48.540
We lived like that for over two years.

00:52:49.040 --> 00:52:51.960
All of us working as slave laborers
in different

00:52:51.960 --> 00:52:55.005
sections of the ghetto.

00:52:55.881 --> 00:52:58.842
The ghetto was run by Chaim Rumkowski

00:52:58.842 --> 00:53:01.428
a Jewish man whom the Nazis

00:53:01.428 --> 00:53:03.847
had put in charge.

00:53:04.556 --> 00:53:07.726
One day in September of 1942.

00:53:08.685 --> 00:53:11.563
They told him to round up 5000 boys

00:53:11.563 --> 00:53:13.899
and bring them to the Nazis.

00:53:14.608 --> 00:53:19.112
They were to be sent to Chelmno extermination camp

00:53:19.863 --> 00:53:23.283
I was one of the boys
picked up by the police.

00:53:23.825 --> 00:53:27.412
What was left of my family
thought I would never return.

00:53:27.537 --> 00:53:31.249
And I, too,
thought the end had finally come.

00:53:31.750 --> 00:53:35.337
But just before I was to be sent away
with the other boys,

00:53:35.503 --> 00:53:41.801
I was told I could return to my apartment
as the quota has been filled.

00:53:42.260 --> 00:53:45.555
I couldn't wait to see my father

00:53:46.223 --> 00:53:47.724
So they said we are free.

00:53:47.724 --> 00:53:48.767
So I ran home.

00:53:48.767 --> 00:53:53.146
I actually ran home
as I walked into the room.

00:53:53.146 --> 00:53:56.775
we had in the ghetto
there was my father standing there

00:53:57.067 --> 00:54:00.487
with a cousin, his first cousin,
who also lived in the ghetto.

00:54:00.779 --> 00:54:04.574
Adler, Yitzak Adler.  And
they couldn't believe their eyes.

00:54:04.741 --> 00:54:09.496
My father just

00:54:14.000 --> 00:54:16.503
He wouldn't let me go.

00:54:17.712 --> 00:54:20.507
And my sisters, they cried.

00:54:20.882 --> 00:54:25.345
They didn’t think they’d see me again.

00:54:27.514 --> 00:54:30.475
Finally, in July of 1944,

00:54:30.475 --> 00:54:33.895
the Nazis liquidated the ghetto

00:54:33.937 --> 00:54:35.355
I'm not sure how,

00:54:35.355 --> 00:54:37.691
perhaps it was just a strong will to live.

00:54:38.483 --> 00:54:43.029
But my dad's family survived
those two terrible years in Lodz.

00:54:43.863 --> 00:54:46.032
They were taken to the train station

00:54:46.032 --> 00:54:50.495
to be transported to what they believed
would be another working ghetto.

00:54:53.540 --> 00:54:54.791
And now

00:54:54.791 --> 00:54:58.086
my dad and I repeated the same steps
he had taken then

00:54:58.461 --> 00:55:01.715
with his father and two sisters.

00:55:02.716 --> 00:55:05.302
And we came here

00:55:06.011 --> 00:55:08.930
several thousand a day from the ghetto.

00:55:09.222 --> 00:55:11.391
When the liquidation started,

00:55:11.391 --> 00:55:15.770
there were about 68,000
people left in the ghetto of Lodz.

00:55:17.188 --> 00:55:19.149
So they brought us here to the station

00:55:19.149 --> 00:55:22.402
and placed us into these cars.

00:55:23.153 --> 00:55:24.988
You rode this car for....

00:55:24.988 --> 00:55:28.199
Approximately two days.

00:55:28.199 --> 00:55:31.244
And when we arrived
to our final destination

00:55:31.244 --> 00:55:34.831
and the doors to the boxcars were opened

00:55:36.166 --> 00:55:38.084
they were greeted right below us

00:55:38.084 --> 00:55:41.171
There were SS officers with whips

00:55:41.171 --> 00:55:45.800
and dogs shouting at us to disembark
at once and line up five across

00:55:46.426 --> 00:55:50.513
men separate
from women and march forward.

00:55:54.684 --> 00:55:59.689
Dad recalled every last memory
of his journey in the boxcar.

00:56:00.065 --> 00:56:02.650
Not one terrible, sad detail

00:56:02.901 --> 00:56:04.778
had been forgotten.

00:56:05.862 --> 00:56:07.947
On this long, horrible trip,

00:56:07.947 --> 00:56:13.370
Dad once told me he had spent the time
thinking about all he had lost from the war.

00:56:13.370 --> 00:56:15.747
His grandparents, his mother,

00:56:15.747 --> 00:56:18.041
and his big brother, Chaim Usher.

00:56:19.834 --> 00:56:23.296
As they arrived at Auschwitz in the fall of 1944,

00:56:23.922 --> 00:56:27.759
Dad had no idea it would be
the last time he saw his sisters

00:56:28.051 --> 00:56:30.345
Ester and Peska.

00:56:31.388 --> 00:56:33.014
And that's when my little sister

00:56:33.014 --> 00:56:35.016
was separated again from us.

00:56:37.018 --> 00:56:39.437
I'll never forget her face
as she turned around

00:56:39.437 --> 00:56:41.815
like her eyes were speaking.

00:56:43.441 --> 00:56:44.818
Don't leave me alone.

00:56:44.818 --> 00:56:46.903
Don't leave me alone.  Don’t leave me alone.

00:56:47.153 --> 00:56:49.364
My father and me

00:56:50.532 --> 00:56:53.993
For me, this was the most difficult
part of our trip together.

00:56:56.037 --> 00:56:58.540
Though
I knew Peska had perished in Auschwitz.

00:56:58.957 --> 00:57:02.710
I never imagined it had happened
quite like this.

00:57:03.461 --> 00:57:07.757
Yeah, that's how it was, unfortunately.

00:57:11.428 --> 00:57:13.888
He stepped into his brother's shoes.

00:57:14.013 --> 00:57:17.684
He acted like the oldest son

00:57:17.892 --> 00:57:20.603
and the oldest son would take

00:57:20.603 --> 00:57:24.065
on the fatherly responsibility.

00:57:24.524 --> 00:57:27.777
He was learning something
about the value of life

00:57:28.069 --> 00:57:30.280
and about the people of the family.

00:57:33.324 --> 00:57:37.745
You okay?
Yeah, I'm okay.

00:57:47.213 --> 00:57:52.927
A visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau
was the end of our journey to Poland.

00:57:53.470 --> 00:57:58.892
March of the Living,  an educational group
that brings teens and survivors to visit

00:57:58.892 --> 00:58:03.605
the concentration camps, had asked me
to come and speak with the kids.

00:58:03.897 --> 00:58:09.068
I am not afraid to be a realist
and express what realism to me means.

00:58:09.277 --> 00:58:10.528
Why is it separated?

00:58:10.528 --> 00:58:11.571
Why is there a fence there?

00:58:11.571 --> 00:58:13.740
And the fence there?
In Birkenau...

00:58:16.075 --> 00:58:19.787
We were liberated early in the morning May 1, 1945.

00:58:19.787 --> 00:58:21.206
It was snowing...

00:58:22.499 --> 00:58:27.795
At first the kids were excited to speak with me
and other survivors on the trip.

00:58:28.505 --> 00:58:32.926
But the shock of being at
Auschwitz-Birkenau and seeing the barracks

00:58:33.426 --> 00:58:38.473
and the museum, caused the kids
to become very quiet.

00:58:39.182 --> 00:58:41.559
It's one thing to read about it

00:58:41.559 --> 00:58:44.729
or see photos of this sacred place.

00:58:44.979 --> 00:58:49.317
It's something else to be there in person.

00:58:56.824 --> 00:59:02.163
I followed dad and the kids as they embarked
on the symbolic march to Birkenau,

00:59:02.163 --> 00:59:05.416
the death camp
located about a mile from Auschwitz.

00:59:06.376 --> 00:59:09.128
You represent the future.

00:59:09.128 --> 00:59:12.549
Some of you may be our future leaders.

00:59:12.549 --> 00:59:16.177
Don’t tolerate any kinds of racism or bigotry.

00:59:19.347 --> 00:59:22.934
Even at the sad place of death and cruelty

00:59:22.934 --> 00:59:25.937
Dad could look beyond his own personal story.

00:59:26.854 --> 00:59:29.941
It was not lost on me,
that he would be explaining

00:59:29.941 --> 00:59:33.987
these dreadful stories to kids
who were the exact same age as he

00:59:34.404 --> 00:59:38.992
when what was left of his family
rolled into Auschwitz in 1944.

00:59:40.159 --> 00:59:43.329
He really had come full circle.

00:59:44.497 --> 00:59:46.416
68 years ago.

00:59:46.416 --> 00:59:50.336
What was left of my family arrived here.

00:59:50.503 --> 00:59:53.881
My father, two sisters, and I.

00:59:54.299 --> 00:59:56.926
But I remember,  and I'll never forget

01:00:04.350 --> 01:00:05.351
Sorry.

01:00:05.393 --> 01:00:09.397
My little sister, who was not quite 12,

01:00:11.024 --> 01:00:13.109
As we were separated

01:00:13.109 --> 01:00:16.863
As much as he might have tried over
the years, Dad had never been able

01:00:16.863 --> 01:00:21.784
to come to emotional grips with the memory
of the demise of his family.

01:00:22.243 --> 01:00:24.495
She turned around

01:00:25.788 --> 01:00:27.665
to look.

01:00:28.166 --> 01:00:29.792
And this place stands

01:00:29.792 --> 01:00:33.212
as a symbol of what he had lost.

01:00:33.504 --> 01:00:40.970
Kaddish being sung under

01:00:41.804 --> 01:00:44.057
After Dad laid roses in remembrance

01:00:44.057 --> 01:00:47.560
of his sister, Peska,
the group sang Kaddish.

01:00:47.560 --> 01:00:50.396
a prayer for the dead.

01:00:50.855 --> 01:00:55.151
It's been nearly 70 years
since Peska's wordless plea for help.

01:00:55.234 --> 01:00:59.864
Perhaps coming to Auschwitz
with the support of these kids

01:01:00.031 --> 01:01:03.493
will finally give Dad some peace.

01:01:09.874 --> 01:01:14.379
I think I now understand what this means to Dad.

01:01:14.379 --> 01:01:16.881
Maybe that's why he asked me to join him.

01:01:16.881 --> 01:01:19.258
To be able to confront the secrets

01:01:19.258 --> 01:01:22.887
that refuse to fade away.

01:01:31.854 --> 01:01:35.233
We had grown together
through these shared moments,

01:01:35.858 --> 01:01:37.860
and what I'll never forget

01:01:37.860 --> 01:01:43.658
Is the pride I felt for him at that time.