Tvingades bada i syra - överlevde med blåsor

“I realized I had no chance to survive, so I gave myself up. I went into nine different concentration camps before the war was over,” said Faber.

Faber said Col. Adolph Eichmann emptied cans of crystal poison through holes in the ceiling onto the Jews below in the showers.

“We walked in the snow with wooden shoes. We walked 11 days and nights to Buchenwald. When we got there, the Nazis pushed their prisoners into a green pool of acid water. Most of them died,” Faber said.

“Only God is my witness how I survived. I was full of blisters.”

Troopers thrust the tattooing needles into the living flesh until the tips struck and grated against bone. It burned like hell at the time, and throbbed for eons after, Faber said recently in telling students at Gardner-South Wilmington High School of the atrocities that befell the Jews during that time.

Hey, if they tore his brother's tongue out, how was his brother supposed to tell them about the mysterious "blue file", which was the whole point of the interrogation?

Faber speaks on Holocaust
Matthew Belanger - Reporter

An estimated 600 students, faculty and community members packed Whitley Auditorium Monday evening to hear a lecture from author and Holocaust survivor David Faber. The auditorium filled so quickly that some people were turned away from the event. Faber discussed his book, "Because of Romek: A Holocaust Survivor’s Memoir."

"The problem was and the problem still is, there is too much hatred in the world. We were living in a country of hate," Faber said. "The people of Poland had been brainwashed by the Nazis for hundreds of years into believing it was okay to kill the Jews."

Faber’s book describes his experiences during the Holocaust in ghettos and concentration camps, as well as his brother Romek’s participation in the resistance against the Nazis. Faber, who was born in Poland, witnessed the murder of his parents and six of his seven siblings during the Holocaust and was imprisoned in eight different concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

During the presentation, Faber recounted many of his childhood memories as well as his final moments with his various family members.

"They were torturing him, punching into him and hitting him again and again," Faber said telling about the death of his brother. "They took out a red hot poker and pushed it into his left eye. I was 14 years old, just a boy, and I was watching my brother die."

Faber’s visit to Elon was sponsored by the Liberal Arts Forum, the History Department, the Office of Residence Life and Hillel, the Jewish campus life organization. Together, these organizations brought Faber to North Carolina for one week where he spoke at Elon, Meredith College, North Carolina State and Chapel Hill.

"I hope it was educational," said Steve Anderson, Assistant Director of Residence Life. Anderson said the presentation was planned to be meaningful, important, as well as inspiring. "I hope it gave the audience something to take with them for their generation and future generations."

Faber lectures frequently for no cost, and his book is a required reading at many middle and high schools as well as colleges and universities across the nation. His book was recently published in German and is now a part of the curriculum in many schools in Germany.

Many students who attended the presentation said they enjoyed the chance to hear Faber speak. "I think every book I have read about the Holocaust pales in comparison to this. I’ve read people’s accounts, but to actually hear someone’s account and to see them choke up and cry about it so many years later is one of the most moving experiences of my life," said freshman Trista Duval.

The presentation lasted almost two hours, and at the conclusion of the lecture, the audience rewarded Faber with a full minute of standing ovation.

Before concluding, Faber offered some advice and words of warning to those in the audience. "You are the future of this great country and you must learn to respect each other. It doesn’t matter if you’re black, white, Hispanic, Jewish or Catholic—there is one god and he loves us all." He said, "Unless you learn to accept each other, you are going to destroy each other. You can live together," said Faber, "it doesn’t matter what race or religion you are."

All told, he was held in nine concentration camps, including Auchwitz, the notorious death camp in Poland. There, because he spoke German as well as Polish, the Nazis forced Faber to assist them. He had to punch holes in cans of Zyklon B pellets that were used to gas the Jews. After each group had been killed, he had to extract any teeth containing gold fillings and collect jewelry from the bodies. But the gas chambers were not efficient enough, so the Nazis resorted to other methods of killing, Faber said.

“The trains arrived day and night,” he recalled. “The Nazis dug big ditches and forced men, women and children into them, then sprayed them with gasoline.

“They burned the people alive. I can still hear their screams,” Faber said, his voice cracking with emotion.
Why did he survive when 6 million others did not? “Only God knows the answer to that,” Faber said, glancing at his book.

In the mid-1950s, Faber emigrated from England to Springfield, Mass. Believing the war and Holocaust were behind him, he got another scare: He received a letter from the Consulate of the German Republic asking him to be a witness for his dead brother. With memories of the Gestapo still vivid in his mind, he refused. But later he learned from the FBI the German’s wanted his help in identifying Nazi war criminals. He did, recognizing an associate of brother’s by a scar on the man’s neck.

“They told me he was a spy,” Faber said, “He betrayed my brother and others in the resistance movement, and he caused the deaths of 18,000 Allied soldiers.”

That’s when Faber learned his brother had been “the brains” behind an efforts to block shipments of heavy water from Norway to Germany for use in manufacturing atomic bombs. The details of that resistance effort were contained in the “blue file” the Gestapo had wanted so desperately.

Faber later testified at the trial of John Demjanjuk in Israel.

As for those who, like Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, insist the Holocaust is myth, he shrugged. “I’m used to it.”

He is pleased that Holocaust denier David Irving is in jail in Austria. “I want to see justice,” he says. “Hate destroys our world. Unless we all learn to respect one another, we will destroy one another.”