By Sophia Fischer
sfischer@theacorn.com

SURVIVOR-Manny Fischman of Newbury Park speaks to a group of Hebrew School students in Agoura Hills about his experiences in the Auschwitz death camp during Wold War II. The event commemorated Holocaust Remembrance Day on May 6. This year's commemoration was especially significant as it marked the 60th anniversary of the liberation of the extermination camps.

It’s been 60 years since Manny Fischman of Newbury Park was a prisoner in the Nazi concentration camps, but his memories of the cold, hunger and suffering are still fresh.

Fischman, 75, was one of several Holocaust survivors who spoke last week to Nomie Azoff’s Judaica Studies program in Agoura Hills in honor of Holocaust Remembrance Day earlier this month.

Recalling the tragic time wasn’t easy for Fischman, but he wanted the children to hear his message.

"There are still people who have so much hate in themselves they deny the Holocaust ever happened, but I can tell you it did happen. I saw it with my own eyes," said Fischman as he rolled up his sleeve to show the concentration camp numbers that the Nazis had tattooed on his left arm, a daily reminder of his past.

"It wouldn’t be right for all those poor people to pass away and have others say it didn’t happen."

"I can tell you the Jewish people have to take care of themselves," Fischman said. "As we know, the rest of the world didn’t care what was taking place against the Jews."

Born in Hungary, Fischman and his family were taken from their home shortly after Fischman’s bar-mitzvah. He was 13. Guarded by bayonet- and gun-wielding Nazis, he and other Jews in his town were forced to live inside a synagogue before being loaded into cattle cars.

"They told us we were going to do work someplace and that we would come back soon. That was a bunch of lies," Fischman said.

After several days locked inside the cattle cars, Fischman arrived at Auschwitz, Poland, the deadliest of the German concentration camps. It was late at night and Fischman recalled how armed Nazis took the Jews’ belongings, including their shoes, from them.

"As people were getting out of the cattle cars the cries and the noise were terrible. It wakes me up at night sometimes, it was so terrible," Fischman said. "Some people were saying prayers and asking, ‘Can you hear me God?’ But no one was listening."

People were separated into two lines. Those who went in one direction, including Fischman’s mother, were never seen again. They were told they would be taking a shower, but instead of water, the room was filled with gas. The bodies were later burned.

"From outside you could smell a terrible smell. When human bodies burn, it’s a terrible smell," Fischman said. "We knew something bad was going on."

Fischman, his father and brother became laborers, marching every day from the camp to a factory where Fischman worked as a bricklayer. He recalled being tortured as punishment for another prisoner’s escape and how he became weak from a lack of food and proper clothing.

Toward the end of the war, Fischman and others were taken to Buchenwald, also in Germany.

"This was a very bad place. It was a place to make sure you got weak enough to die. Every day they took out several hundred bodies," Fischman said.

His father died at Buchenwald, but Fischman didn’t find out until after the war.

Fischman vividly recalls the day he was rescued. The day before the Allies arrived he had thrown himself among dead bodies outside the camp to hide from an approaching Nazi. He later returned to the barracks with several of the remaining prisoners. The next morning as he lay on the floor, weak from hunger and illness, he saw an American Jeep outside.

"It was a blessing from heaven," Fischman said.

He was sent to an orphanage in France, but an aunt in New York saw his name in a New York Times article about war orphans and brought him to the United States, to what Fischman says is "the best country in the world."

Fischman was later reunited with his brother, Harry, who now lives in Los Angeles.

"I never gave up. I said I’m going to make it and I did. . . . If you fight for it and don’t give up, you will succeed in life."

For many years Fischman didn’t speak of his Holocaust experiences, not even to his four children, including Ross, of Calabasas.

Soon, Fischman will celebrate his 50th wedding anniversary to his wife, Janet, a teacher in Woodland Hills. The couple has nine grandchildren.

He urged the students to commemorate Holocaust Day every year. As the survivors gradually diminish, Fischman said it is even more important for young people to remember the past.

"This is why I came to see you today," Fischman said. "The whole world should remember. In history, nothing as bad as the Holocaust has ever happened. Always remember what happened to our people."

He then joined the children in reciting the mourner’s prayer, followed by singing "Ose Shalom," a prayer for peace.

"What we are saying is that we are alive and continuing our Jewish education," said teacher Nomie Azoff.