Word: israelity
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...Israel says he survived in part because he learned German on the spot at Auschwitz. "It probably saved my life," he says. "If you didn't understand the SS and the Kapos [the prisoners who supervised work gangs] when they gave orders, then you risked death." During his time there, Israel worked in the coal mines around Auschwitz. (Read a TIME cover story on the end of World...
...Israel, who now lives in Brussels, has been back to Auschwitz five or six times over the years, often acting as a tour guide for other visitors. But he says the visits always fill him with dread. "Every trip is painful. Even last night, I couldn't sleep. I finally got out of bed at 4 a.m., had a coffee and tried to read," he says. When I am alone, I still cry." The memories are as real as one physical reminder: he rolls up his sleeve to reveal the identification tattoo on his forearm, "B-7394." (See pictures...
...Inside the camp, Israel ambles through the thick snow with no gloves on a 2°F day, pointing to the sparse bunker where he slept crammed together with other prisoners on tiny bunks. Then, next to the railroad tracks, he spots the location where the "selection" process took place. This was where Nazi officers separated those deemed able to work from the other new arrivals, most of whom were immediately taken to the gas chambers. Israel, then 17, and his two brothers, Eli and Aaron, last saw their parents here. Within weeks, Israel's brothers would also be dead...
...remained. Just a week earlier, Nazi officials had evacuated the facility, destroyed the camp's records and blown up the gas chambers. Most of the prisoners, some 60,000 of them, were then sent on a death march to other camps as their Nazi guards fled the Soviet advance. Israel was one of the marchers. He says they walked for about 60 miles in temperatures dipping to -10°F until they reached the town of Wodzislaw Slaski in southern Poland. "We only had our thin prison clothes and broken shoes. If you wanted a warm drink...
...When he recovered, Israel didn't want to return to Rhodes. Before the war, the island - now part of Greece - had a vibrant, 1,700-strong Sephardic Jewish community, but afterward, only 151 remained. So he found work as a trader in the Belgian Congo instead and then moved to Brussels, where he has remained ever since. (Read "Murder Trial Puts Focus on French Anti-Semitism...