Md. Holocaust Survivor Makes a Point of Speaking Out
Klaus Zwilsky, 74, of Calvert County MD, is a Holocaust survivor. However, his story is relatively unique among Jews who emerged from the horrors of Nazi Germany. He was not sent to a concentration camp, nor did he spend World War II hiding in the home of a sympathtic non-Jew. Instead, Zwilsky survived in a Jewish hospital in Berlin, with the knowledge, and consent, of the Nazi government.
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Zwilsky is one of twenty who were interviewed for Daniel B. Silver’s book “Refuge in Hell: How Berlin’s Jewish Hospital Outlasted the Nazis.” The book details how the 800 or so Jews living in the hospital managed to survive in the capital of Nazi Germany. Causes range from bureaucratic infighting to German leader Adolf Hitler’s ambivalence about how to handle Jews of German descent to the simple fact that the Nazis needed a place to treat Jews.
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“Certainly there was fear,” he said. At times, they almost wished to be sent off to a camp, just to relieve themselves of the constant threat of danger. They did not know at this time that places like Theresienstadt were not relocation camps but places for Jews to be held before they were sent to their death at another location. Zwilsky and his family did not learn about many of these things until after the war.
“We didn’t know at the time,” he said, that the Nazis were systematically executing Jews. “You find out all these things afterwards.” […]
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“I don’t want the story to be forgotten,” Zwilsky said, “and it needs to be repeated and people should know about it and that it really happened. […]”
Source: www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/05/14/AR2007051400551.html
By Ben Blumberg, Washington Post Scholarship Winner
Monday, May 14, 2007; 1:54 PM