Survivor shares horrors of Holocaust with students

When 89-year-old Howard Chandler was growing up in Poland, Jews who were caught not wearing an armband could be shot.

Nazis had taken over his hometown of Starachowice, now Wierzbnik, and moved all Jews to an area known as the ghetto, forcing them to wear an armband denoting their religion.

Despite the consequences of removing the armband, Mr. Chandler, nearly a teenager at the time, recalled taking it off to go play with his non-Jewish friends.

Mr. Chandler, who now lives in Toronto, shared his Holocaust experiences last week with Bethel Park High School sophomores and juniors through a program supported by Classrooms Without Borders, a Pittsburgh organization.

Although Mr. Chandler acknowledged that talking about his time in concentration camps is not an easy thing to do, it is a “very necessary thing,” he said.

“You are the last generation to actually bear witness and hear the story,” Hilary Tyson, a member of the board of directors for Classrooms Without Borders, told the students.

When Mr. Chandler was about 13 years old, he began working with family members in an ammunition factory in his town that made bullets for the German army. His father had said he was 16 so that he could get a work permit.

One day, Jews were made to assemble in the town square.

“That day they shot 200 people. Some even in their beds,” Mr. Chandler recalled.

Those who had a work permit were separated from those who didn’t, and 1,500 people, including his mother, sister and younger brother, were taken to a train and he neversaw them again.

About 2,500 people with work permits were made to work in the factories and live in barracks that were infested with fleas, bedbugs and lice.

“The conditions were terrible,” he said. “Many people died.” When people were too sick to go to work, they were shot, he said.

After working in the factory for about two years, the surviving workers were transported by train for several days without food or water. Many people died on the train, he said.

“We were so dejected from the journey. We didn’t know it, but we had just arrived at Auschwitz,” he said, referring to the concentration camp in Poland.

That was where Mr. Chandler was separated from his father. He never saw him again.

After six months, he and the others who had survived were taken to another concentration camp, Buchenwald in Germany, where he was reunited with his older brother.

Then, Mr. Chandler and about 4,000 others were put on another train trip -— this one for several weeks to the Theresienstadt camp in the Czech Republic with only a couple days’ supply of food. Only about 400 people survived the trip, he said.

When World War II ended, the camp was liberated by the Russians.

“My brother and I survived. The majority of people, including my extended family, did not,” he said.

TheDec. 6 presentation had animpact on the students.

“We’ve just been reading about it in textbooks,” junior Alexa Will said of the Holocaust. “It’s important to actually hear it in person,” she said.

“What struck me the most was the age of him and his brother,” said Natalie Farmerie, a junior. “I have an 11year-oldbrother,” she said.

She said the experience of hearing Mr. Chandler was important.

“We have to pay attention because we are the last generation to meet Holocaust survivors,” she said.

It especially hit home for sophomore Miranda Johns, who said her grandmother, who is Catholic, also survived the Holocaust.

“She was from a town two hours away from Mr. Chandler,” she said.

Miranda said she has always heard stories of what happened from her grandmother and that it was good that her classmates could also hear a firsthand account of the Holocaust.

“It was just really eyeopening to hear from someone who has lived that. It makes it so much more real,” sophomore Sydney Burns said.

“It happened a long time ago in your minds, but not in mine,” Mr. Chandler told the students. “Unfortunately, the way things are going in the world, it’s never stopped happening. We never seemed to have learned a lesson.”

Talking about recently celebrating his 89th birthday, he said, “In my wildest dreams, I never thought I would reach that age.”