On Thursday, May 22nd, I went to visit the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Montreal. About halfway through the exhibits, I met the man in the center of this photograph. His name is Joe Fellner, and he was a Hungarian-born Jew who survived the Holocaust. Joe is the youngest of his twelve siblings, and his father owned a slaughterhouse in Hungary. Helping out with his father’s work made him bigger and stronger than most boys his age. When Joe was thirteen, he was taken to his first concentration camp, Auschwitz. Upon arrival another prisoner asked Joe how old he was. When Joe said he was thirteen, the prisoner replied, “No. You’re eighteen. When they ask, you’re eighteen.” So when the officers came around asking age, Joe said he was eighteen, and was put to work with one of his brothers and his cousin. Even though they begged, pleaded and cried, afraid that they would be killed because of Joe’s lie, he refused to go back and correct his age (later, Joe told me he found out that anyone under the age of eighteen was immediately sent to the gas chambers).
Joe was in Auschwitz for two months, and then he, his brother and his cousin were sent in a group of 700 to start a new camp near Berlin. By the time the camp was shut down, it had grown to more than 1,300 people. 90 of those 1,300 walked out alive. Joe was the only one of the original 700.
Joe went to three more concentration camps, visiting a total of 5 during the Holocaust. He survived by eating anything he could find, including worms, rotten scraps, partially-eaten food from officers running the camp, and even one time oats from horse poop. He watched prisoners brutally tortured before being killed; he saw two Russian prisoners of war dragged around by their tongues until they died. He was forced to dig mass graves for American soldiers, and again for Canadian soldiers. By the time he turned fourteen, he had lived in five concentration camps and had gone from 176lbs. to 58lbs. He was little more than a skeleton, and even when he did find people from his old home, they thought him dead, and placed him with the other bodies, saying the Kaddish (Jewish prayer for the dead) and leaving him to die. It was now June 4, 1945.
On June 4th, 1945, Joe felt someone measuring his pulse. He lifted Joe from the dead bodies, and began trying to get Joe to wake up. He gave him two booster shots and slapped his face repeatedly, saying in German “We are the Americans. You are free.” He finally managed to bring Joe around, and Joe could see light on either side of him, but he couldn’t see the man’s face. All he could see was black. When he told the man this, the man said, “You’re supposed to see that; I’m a black man.” He stayed with Joe for an hour, and then left to find help. Joe never saw the man again.
In 1948, after traveling back to Hungary and finding out that of all of his family, only he, two brothers, and three of his sisters survived, Joe decided to leave Hungary, which was becoming more and more of a Communist country that Joe wanted no part of. He chose to go to Canada, where he would not have to join the armed forces, and has lived there ever since. He has been married to his wife for the last 58 years, and has two sons, two daughters-in-law, five grandchildren, one great-grandchild and another on the way.
Meeting Joe that day completely blew my mind. Joe described horrors to me that I had never imagined happened before, and he not only survived this terrible ordeal, but has thrived since. He goes to schools all the time to talk to students about his experience, to make sure they are informed so that he can help ensure that nothing like this ever happens again. He made it through everything without losing his faith in God, and without doubting that he would make it out alive. I am truly proud to know him, and have never met a stronger man in my life.