Life Is Not Cheap: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks

Life Is Not Cheap: A Holocaust Survivor Speaks

As those who survived the Holocaust age, their stories threaten to be lost forever. Yet we vow not to forget the Holocaust, that most horrible chapter in human history. Kevin Cummings of The Plano Star Courier brings the story of a woman who survived the Holocaust and who tells her own story, so that all will remember that “Life has value,” and that we will never forget:

Anneliese Nossbaum carried a picture of her father with her always. During showers, she would hide the photograph in her mouth to keep it from being confiscated, until one day the photo faded. That was the last time she ever saw her father.

It was also the last time she saw her then 29-year-old aunt, and many of the other people she knew and loved who passed away from the atrocities wrought upon them in Nazi concentration camps.

“Normally if I have a death in the family … that’s just the cycle of life; not this one. This one was done too intentionally to wipe us out for really no reason,” Nossbaum said. “There was such hatred toward us that it was frightening, and it still is frightening today.”

In 1944, 15-year-old Nossbaum was taken in a rail car along with her mother and many others to Auschwitz. Lying about her age, she was sent to work in an airplane part factory in Freiberg, Germany. Her aunt, a teacher, was sent to the gas chambers because of a hip deformity.

After celebrating her 16th birthday in Freiberg with a few slices of bread her mother was able to collect and save, Nossbaum was sent to the Mauthausen concentration camp. On May 4, 1945 she was sent to the gas chambers. However, due to bombing by Allied forces in the nearby city, there was a shortage of Zyklon B – a pesticide used by the Nazis in the camps. Nossbaum was sent back to the camp, until it was resupplied. It never was. On May 5, Allied forces liberated the camp, she said.

“I could forgive the Germans for some of the things they did to me personally, like the hunger and not going to school and all that,” Nossbaum said. “I can do that for myself, but I cannot … atone them for the murder of my family, my people and all those who were involved. That’s up to God to judge them.”

Throughout her time in concentration camps and forced labor, Nossbaum carried with her a soap box and hairbrush made from metal at the factory in Freiberg. These two items, borne from necessity, serve as witnesses to “the truth” of the Holocaust. On Friday, she brought them with her to the Adat Chaverim synagogue in Plano as she spoke to residents, telling her story to keep the memory alive, but to also make sure it stays a part of history.

“It’s so important to never forget this, not only to remember it but to try to remind us to stand up against it from happening again,” said Adat Chaverim Rabbi Benjamin Sternman. “The Holocaust was allowed to happen because people stood by and did nothing. They knew that it was happening … but they chose not to do anything about it. We’re making choices every day. We look around the world and see what’s happening and we make our choices.”

Nossbaum said she mainly speaks to student groups in order to teach them to stand up for what is right and to dispel myths that the Holocaust never happened.

“I want the individual to be talked to, they can take anything I can say or we can say as the survivors, apply it to their own lives,” she said. “When I’m speaking, I can’t change all of that, I can’t change anything in the political scene, the only thing I can do is speak to the individual [person].

“When I speak, then I speak to the individual person and now I’m seeking the value of moral, ethical behavior that I want them to apply. I want them to apply the respect that was missing toward us of life. Life has value. Life is not cheap, nor should it be destroyed.”