Holocaust survivor gives insight into horrific time

For many audience members, hearing a Holocaust survivor’s story for the first time resulted in painful tears, full-body trembles and uncomfortable cringes at revolting mental images.

For Holocaust survivor Walter Kase, reliving the story almost seven decades later incites no milder of a response.

“This is probably the 1,200th time I have told this story, and I cry every single time,” Kase said. “I still can’t see how human beings could do these things to other humans.”
Kase shared the horrors of living as a Jew in Nazi-controlled Poland during World War II at the Texas Union on Tuesday afternoon. The event was hosted by the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. Allegra Azulay, outreach coordinator for the center, said the event was held to educate UT students about the tragedy from a first-hand perspective while it is still possible.

“It’s important to know the actual facts about these things that happened, which seem like so long ago, so that people understand the horror of the experiences and how anti-Semitism impacted society at that time,” Azulay said. “The results are still affecting people today.”

Kase chronicled his journey, starting as an 11-year-old boy wearing a Star of David, to being sent to from hard-labor camp to hard-labor camp, to being separated from his mother, to watching his eight-year-old sister shot by the soldiers because she was too young for labor.

Kase said starvation was the biggest enemy, and his biggest break came when the Nazi soldiers assigned him to be a potato-peeler, a job he said is the equivalent of being Colt McCoy for a day. He said the Nazis would pat him down after kitchen duties, but he would sneak food to his father by taking potato peels, squeezing them together and smearing the paste on to the inside of his clothing.

“I knew that if I got caught with any trace of food, they would take me outside and shoot me,” he said. “But I also knew that my father was going to die without the food.”

Kase and his father survived the brutal conditions of the labor camp until American soldiers found them in May 1945. He came to the United States through an American relief agency program.

Kase said he did not begin speaking to large audiences until recently and that he hopes to serve as a symbol for the atrocities that can originate from simple prejudice and hatred.

He said he is disappointed with the steps the world has taken to avoid such catastrophes.

“Race, religion and culture are three gifts that God gave us to enrich the population, and people use them to create mayhem,” he said. “I don’t see much improvement on what is happening today.”

David, an electrical engineering freshman who didn’t want his last name printed, said he attended out of curiosity and interest, and took away much more than he expected.

“It serves as a reminder of who we are and what we should do,” he said. “I didn’t expect it to be so strong and emotional, but I guess it has to be strong and emotional if you want to prevent history from repeating itself.”

Comments

5 comments

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Wed Oct 28 2009 16:35

This generation benefits from hearing survivor stories first hand. It also does good to hear the memoirs of the service peopel who heard their country's call to action and did what they had to during WW11. Everything the Allies did to end that atrocity is amazing. That really was the greatest generation.

robert kelso sr

Wed Oct 28 2009 16:14

Thank you for the information. But if ‘cleaning’ needed at Theresienstadt why send inmates to Auschwitz to be killed? In fact inmates sent to work at Birkenau where nearly all died of typhus. There is no unambiguous evidence of murderous gas chambers. Witnesses testify to seeing gas chambers built at Auschwitz after the war for tourist purposes. The pictures you speak of are addressed in my original.

There are authentic documents pertaining to transportation of course but know of none documenting ‘extermination’. Are the documents you speak of in the public domain?

Testimony of eyewitnesses notoriously unreliable - many re the Holocaust ludicrous. The ‘thousands of books’ you speak of self-serving while those refuting them have no reason to be. Non-violent people sit in prison today merely because of their opinions - as would I.

I am not interested in defending Himmler or any other Socialist. My interest is historical accuracy. Let’s keep on topic please.

Freddy lejeune

Wed Oct 28 2009 12:33

The comments above confirm the neeed to educate those who like those seem uninformed. The Red Cross has admitted that the Nazis fooled them when it went to concentration camp Theresienstadt, cleaning their act , and after the red Cross visitors depatyed send most of the jewish inmates to Auschwitz and gassed themMillions of documents ,originals by the Nazis testifying to the deportation and extermination, weref ound at the end of World War II and areat the national Archives of the US as well in the official German Government's archives. The testimonies of survivors and liberators , thousands of books on the Holocau t ragedy, and finally pictyres , and confessions by the perpetrators themselves are more evidence. Finally, just to cite one speech whose taping was made, the speech of heinrich Himmler admitting the need to exterminate even jewish children so that would not survive to avenge their murdered parents (see speeech on october 6, 1943 in Poznan by Heinnrich Himmler, head of the SS and Gestapo)

robert kelso sr

Wed Oct 28 2009 11:57

I understand the International Red Cross was given free access during their inspections of the labor camps and there are no reports of starvation or executions of innocents in their reports. Most deaths are attributed to typhus epidemics which, due to the overload of the crematoriums, is evidenced by photographs of piles of emaciate corpses showing them in the final stages of typhus. This in spite of widespread fumigations of labor's clothes. One such victim was Anne Frank. To his credit Walter Kase did not raise the "six million" figure, a figure revised downward several million and concurred in by Shmuel Krakowsky, head of research at Israel's Yad Vashem Memorial for Jewish Victims of the Holocaust in 1991.

Noras

Wed Oct 28 2009 10:48

Good article, but who was the Nazi soldiers ?

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