Survivors share pain of dehumanization, abuse
Holocaust survivor Nate Leipciger and Indian residential school survivor Eugene Arcand both know the degradation of having their humanities reduced to an identification number.
Leipciger’s six-digit number was placed on him at Auschwitz, where he and his father were separated from his mother and sister, who both perished in the Nazi death camp. The family had already been forced to live for years in ghettos but were rounded up in 1943 and packed, standing, into a train boxcar that took them to Auschwitz.
“These were the last moments I spent with my family,” Leipciger said.
Arcand’s three-digit number was applied to him at age six at the church-run institution where, for the next 11 years, he was forced to live with the daily fear of physical, emotional and sexual abuse.
The children at the residential schools learned to live by the animal instinct of survival, he said. It was an experience that damaged him and thousands of others who grew up hiding from the shame and pain of their childhood experience, many abusing alcohol and drugs.
On Monday, Leipciger and Arcand told more than 1,000 Saskatoon
high school students at Holy Family Cathedral about the commonality of their experiences.
They smiled as an interviewer noted they both always wear a hat, and Arcand observed that they also have the same number of children and grandchildren.
Their similar suffering and strength resonates between them. They both know the pain of separation from their families and of being dehumanized because of their beliefs and cultures.
Arcand said he carried a shameful secret most of his life; that he had been sexually abused in residential school. He finally rejected the shame when he heard a public speaker say molested children are not the perverts. Rather, they are innocent victims.
“It was a turning point … (I began to) try to reprogram myself.” Arcand said.
Since then he has spoken his truth without shame.
Hearing Arcand’s story for the first time a decade ago gave Leipciger the courage to disclose the sexual abuse he suffered at the hands of other prisoners in the concentration camp.
The men on Monday urged the students to hug their parents and siblings, to understand that all humans are equal and all must be accepted unconditionally.
Leipciger asked the youths to speak out against injustice, to not be bystanders whose silence gives credence to persecutors.
The event was part of the Courageous Conversations series organized by the Saskatchewan Human Rights Commission.