Michael Korenblit: Thank you, Robin, very much. Hi, everybody!
And with that introduction, I guess, that's it. Goodbye.
(Laughter)
Robin informed me that I only have two hours today.
So I understand if some of you will have to leave.
So I will try and get through as much of the storythat I can 
and relate some of things that I actually talkedto 
with students when I am talking to high school students, 
elementary students and high school students.
But the first thing that I would to say for all the
people in DHS who are here today:
As a citizen here in the state of Oklahoma,
I want you all to know how much I appreciate all the work that you all do.
Too many times, people go after state employees, and I
just want you all to know that I appreciate all the work that
you all do and will continue to do, so thank you.
When I was, oh, as was referenced, I'm Co-founder
of The Respect Diversity Foundation. We are an educational foundation.
We have a whole speakers bureau, of Holocaust educators, civil rights, human
rights organizations, businesses, to teach the importance of respect 
andtolerance for all people, no matter their differences.
And the reason the foundation wascreated in the first place 
was because of my own family's background.
And I am going to share part of their story with you 
and why what happened to my parents over 70 years ago 
was important to each and every one of you sitting here
in this room today, in my opinion.
Anyway, when I was six years old, I was sitting in the living room 
with my parents in Ponca City, Oklahoma.
And it was the first time that I noticed something on my parents' wrists, 
right here where you'd wear your watch, right above there.
And it was the "K" and an "L" with the blue ink.
And on the inside of my mother's forearm, right across there, 
was the letter A followed by the number 27327. 
And being the inquisitive little people we are at that age, 
I asked my parents what those were.
And they tried to explain to me in the least horrifying 
and in the simplest of terms, that they were both survivors of the Holocaust.
I will use some of the PowerPoint here that I have. I think I will.
That's a picture of my mom and dad right there after the war. 
Obviously this PowerPoint needs to be updated, I have 68 years there.
And they tried to explain to me in the least horrifying ways about the Holocaust. 
I'm sure that most of you all have studied or read things about the Holocaust in the past.
But just very briefly so that people understand: six million Jews were murdered in the Holocaust.
The same number of people who live in the states of
Oklahoma, Montana, Wyoming, North Dakota and Vermont today.
Imagine driving up from Texas, or down from Kansas, 
or across from Arkansas, or across from New Mexico, 
and not finding a single human being here in the state of Oklahoma.
Those are the kind of numbers that we're talking about.
And why? Simply because of who they were, for no other reason.
Not because of anything they did religiously, not because of anything they did economically, 
not because of anything they did culturally, not because of anything they did politically.
Simply because of who they were.
Of those six million Jews, it's estimated that about four million of them
were murdered in the extermination camps, the six extermination camps that were set up.
And the interesting thing about this as you read through history
is all of the extermination camps that were set up, none of them were set up in Germany. 
They were all set up in Poland.
The six extermination camps- the extermination camps were the places where they actually 
had the gas chambers, where the Jews were gassed, and then their bodies were taken
to the crematorium where they were burned.
There's a picture right here of one of the crematoriums, that you can see, 
I think I have a laser there. Right there, you can see a little red dot.
That was the place where they would take them 
and they would have all the people take off their clothes.
And they would actually tell the Jews, "Keep your clothes together. Fold them up neatly.
So that when you come out of the showers, after these long train rides, 
that you'd be able to find your clothes. 
We're going to take you to have a hot meal, then we'll take you to the barracks 
where you're going to be housed."
And instead they were taken to another building, over here
where they were taken into a place that looked like 
- oops, going backward - that look like showers. 
You could see right here at the top, right up there, that looked like 
water faucets that would be turned on as people are going in the showers.
Mothers would carry in their babies, fathers would hold on to the hands 
of their young children, grandparents to the hands of their grandchildren.
And they would pack anywhere from 350-500 Jews at a time into these areas.
They would close the doors, seal them up, 
and the Jews would wait for the water to be turned on.
And instead, there would... two SS soldiers, either in the ceiling 
or in a door outside a steel door, that had a panel that you moved over 
where they would drop in these small pellets called Zyclon B, which was a form of cyanide.
The hotter it got in the place, the quicker the poison would be given off.
And with that many people packed into a small area, 
it took about 20 minutes for everybody inside to be killed.
They then would take them to the oven where they would put them on the slabs 
and shove them into the ovens where they would cremate them and burn the bodies.
Four million people were murdered that way.
It's estimated that the other two million people were murdered in a variety of ways.
One, in the beginning, when the Nazis first invaded the Soviet Union, 
they sent out special "killing squads." 
And these squads would go into towns, cities, villages, 
and then round up all the Jews from the youngest to the oldest.
March them outside of the city where they would literally have to
take off their clothes and then they would shoot them dead 
and bury them in these mass graves.
That caused a problem for the Nazis, two very serious problems.
Anybody know what the problems might have been?
Don't be shy, come on. Yes, gentleman in the back.
Audience member: (inaudible)
Michael Korenblit: I'm sorry.
Audience member: Keeping it quiet and disposing of the remains?
Michael Korenblit: Keeping it quiet and disposing of the remains... Actually, no.
They really didn't... at that time they didn't care. Yes?
Audience member: Using the bullets?
Michael Korenblit: There's one reason - they're in the middle of a war,
and they're using bullets that are needed in the war effort.
Anybody know what the second reason might be?
Audience member: Disease.
Michael Korenblit: Disease? Nope. 
Audience member: Not fast enough. 
Michael Korenblit: Not fast enough? Nope.
What happened to all was: no matter how much you have indoctrinated people to hate somebody else,
no matter how bigoted you might be, when you're only job eight hours a day 
was to go into every city, village, and town and round up every single Jew 
and march them outside of the city, and mass-murder them,
they began to have a morale problem on those Nazi soldiers.
And that's exactly what started happening and that's why the Nazis came up with some other methods.
First one was called "mobile killing vans" that they would drive these vans 
to the outskirts of the city or town, keep the vans running, 
march anywhere from 40 to 80 Jews at a time to these vans,
stuff the Jews in the back of the van and close the door, seal it up, 
and then run the hose from the exhaust back into the van. Problem solved.
You're no longer having to use bullets and you don't have to look at the faces 
of the people that you're murdering.
But there was one detail about that process that that Nazis didn't like.
It took anywhere from an hour and a half to three hours for every Jew to be dead.
And that wasn't fast enough.
And that's when they created the extermination vans with the gas chambers, 
which they had actually started using in Germany on the handicapped. 
And there was a large outcry from Germany, from German people 
about what they were doing with the handicapped and special needs people in Germany.
Jehovah's Witnesses. Did somebody raise there hand? Why Jehovah's Witnesses? Yes?
Audience member: (inaudible)
Michael Korenblit: Absolutely. Their only allegiance was to Jesus, to God.
And they would not give a Nazi salute 
and they refused to adhere to any of the Nazi rules that were. 
And because of that over 12,000 of them were put into the camps, 
in the concentration labor camps and thousands of them died in those camps.
Also included communists and socialists who spoke out against what the Nazis where doing.
Included the mentally and physically handicapped. 
Included homosexuals, Free Masons, priests, bishops, pastors who spoke out 
from the pulpits about what the Nazis stood for.
Five million more - the same number of people who live in South Dakota, 
New Hampshire, Maine, and New Mexico today. 
Another five million people simply because of who they were or for speaking out.
11 million people simply because of who they were. Between 1939 and 1945, 11 million people.
Now, I'm not going to go through a lot of stuff with the Holocaust 
but I just want to touch on a few of those things just to give you an idea.
My parents came from a small little town in Poland, a place called Hrubieszow.
It was right near the Soviet boarder on the Booth river.
Their town was about... had about 20,000 people in it.
And of that population about 55% were Christian, 
and of that Christian population about 99.8% were Catholic, 
because as you may know, Poland is the most Catholic country 
in the entire world outside of Vatican City. 
And so it was about 11,500 or so. The other 45% were Jews about 8500 or so.
And Jews had lived in this area, this town and this area of Poland for close to 400 years. 
And for the most part, the Jews and the Christian Poles had gotten along together.
There had been some pogroms, there had been things that were going on, 
for the most part they got along in this area.
My dad came from an immediate family of his mother, father, 
two elder brothers and three younger sisters.
His grandparents, his aunts, uncles, cousins, distant cousins were scattered throughout Poland 
and right across the border in the Soviet Union.
If you added up all the family members from the grandparents down
to the distant cousins, it came to about 45 people or so.
My dad's father owned a couple of mills in the area.
Which meant all the farmers in the area, whether they or Christians or Jews, 
would bring their goods to him to process.
Their hay, their wheat, their barley, so they could take it to market to sell.
So, because of that my dad and his family got to know some Christian poles very well.
Three of them who play a very important role in my parents' story.
One in particular, was this young man, named Josef Wisniewski, real happy-go-lucky guy.
He was about 28 years old. He was a farmer.
He used to come and bring his goods there.
He used to hang out at my dad's father's mill, and they would talk 
and learn about each other's religion. 
And he actually was invited over to my dad's family's house to see how they observed the holidays.
And eventually, my dad's father trusted him enough where he used to let 
my dad go and help him with his chores, on his farm.
The young man's name was, Josef Wisniewski.
My dad would tell you that Josef taught him how to be a man.
Now how did Josef teach him how to a man?
One of things that made what Josef Wisniewski was a real happy-go-lucky guy 
is because he always had a pint of vodka in back of his pocket.
(laughter)
So how did Josef Wisniewski teach my dad how to be a man?
One, he gave him his first drink of vodka...
(laughter)
Michael Korenblit (continues): ...and two, he was the first one that talked to him about sex.
So, to my dad, that was teaching him how to be a man.
Meanwhile, on my mothers side of the family, she came from an immediate family of her mother,
father, an elderly sick aunt who lived with them, three brothers and three other sisters.
The rest of her family - grandparents, aunts, uncles and cousins, were scattered throughout Poland.
If you added them all up from the grandparents, again, to the distant cousins 
it came to about 40 people or so.
My mom's father was a handyman, a bricklayer, a builder, in Poland before the war started,
and that's what he did to make a living. 
And Robin mentioned that my mom and dad, she thought met when they were 17.
Not quite, they met when they were eight years old in elementary school, actually.
My mom passed away three years ago April and up until that time, you all, 
she would have told you that when she first laid eyes on my father, 
she knew that that was the person she wanted to be with for the rest of her life.
Meanwhile my dad, having that male ego that we have, said "yeah, she was cute" and he liked her.
But he liked looking around at all the other young girls that were in the class.
(laughter)
But eventually, the two of them got together and they became boyfriend and girlfriend, 
and that was the situation on September 1st, 1939, 
when my mother was 14 and a half years old, and my dad was 14 and the Nazi's invaded Poland.
One of the things that I didn't go over with you, which I will real quickly, 
is when the Nazi's came into power, one of the first things they did 
was initiate the Nuremberg Laws in 1935. 
And what those laws did was actually define who a citizen of Germany could be.
More importantly, define who a citizen could not be, particularly the Jews.
Some of the laws they had underneath the Nuremberg laws were:
No inter-marriage between Germans and Jews. Jews were denied the right to vote.
Jews were denied the use of public transportation. 
Jews could only live in designated areas. I'm sorry. 
Jews could not eat in German restaurants. Jews could not stay in German hotels.
Jews were denied access to state colleges and universities.
Jewish students could not attend public schools with German students. And Jews had curfews.
Do those laws sound familiar to anything you all know about here? 
Absolutely, Jim Crow laws. Jim Crow laws: 
No inter-marriage between African Americans and whites. 
African Americans had to ride in the back of buses.
African Americans were denied the right to vote.
African Americans could not live in white areas.
African Americans could not eat in white restaurants.
African Americans could not stay in white hotels.
African Americans not allowed to attend state colleges and universities.
African American students could not attend public school with white students.
African Americans could not be in white areas after sunset.
We have a nice couple that drove up here from Norman, Oklahoma to be here today, 
they saw it in the Norman transcript.
Norman, Oklahoma had a statute on the books that said no black person 
could be in the Norman City limits after sunset.
And if they were, at a minimum, they were arrested.
Most of the time they were beaten up and some were even killed.
Simply because of the color of their skin.
Oklahoma is a great state, you all, we have produced some absolutely incredible human beings.
From musicians, to astronauts, to scientists, to teachers, to entertainers. It's a great history.
But we have to look at the whole history of Oklahoma.
And one of the things, as you go back and look at history, the first law "S-1", 
that was passed in 1907 when we became a state were the Jim Crow laws here in the state of Oklahoma.
We need to teach that so that people don't forget that those things actually happen.
When the Nazis invaded Poland, they initiated those same laws in Poland that they had initiated in Germany, 
Czechoslovakia and Austria, on the Jews. But they added a few other things.
By the way, that's a picture of my dad's family.
That's my dads father, right in the middle there, 
and that youngster right there on the end there, is my dad.
That's a picture of my mom right there, on the end right there, 
and those are three of her brothers and two of her sisters there.
Those are the only pictures that we have of her family that survived the war, 
and it was a distant cousin in Israel who sent it to them after the war 
actually here in the United States when they emigrated here.
But, one of the other laws that they added, is that every single Jew 
would have to wear a Star of David, either sewn on their clothes or an armband, 
so everyone would know who the Jews were.
When I say everybody, I mean everybody.
From the smallest of children... whoops, skip right by... To senior citizens.
Many people think that the Holocaust started when the Nazis came into power, 
and it's not true, in Germany.
The Holocaust started... and one thing that I really try to emphasize with students, 
but it's adults, too, because you have such a responsibility to play in this area...
because the Holocaust didn't start with mass murder.
It started with the sick, simple acts of harassment and bullying.
Young people, who belonged to the Nazi Youth Party, who would go and wait outside 
of the Jewish synagogue or outside of a Jewish school and wait for a Jewish student 
or an elderly Jew to come out where they would corner them up against a wall in an alley, 
start harassing them, yelling at them, calling them names, spitting on them.
That's how the Holocaust started. 
With simple acts of harassment and bullying to try make people feel like 
they were inferior human beings to the people who were doing it.
So, that's the situation.
My dad's father became concerned for his two older sons.
Not because he thought that they were going to be killed
because no Jew even conceived of anything happening at this time, 
like what was going to transpire over the next five years.
But he was afraid they might be drafted into the army, might be sent away to work, 
so he sent them across the border into the Soviet Union to stay with relatives there 
because they were 36 and 18 months older than my dad. 
But because my dad was only 14 they thought it was best 
that he stay there with the family.
Then the Nazis started putting in more rules.
Jews - you can no longer own a business.
Jews - you can't work for Christians.
You can't own a business, you can't work for Christians.
How are we supposed to make a living? You don't have to worry about that.
We'll give you the food you need. We'll give you the clothing that you need. 
We'll give you the medicine you need, etc.
Oh and by the way, males, all of you between the ages of 13 and 65 will work 
for us at no pay. Hard labor.
So everyday, my dad and his father had to go out with other Jews to do hard labor 
for 12 hours from 7:00 in the morning until 7:00 in the evening.
7:00 in the evening there was a curfew put into effect.
No Jew could be out of their house after 7:00 pm in the evening. How would they know?
Because you'd have a yellow star of David either sewn on your clothes or on an arm band.
Okay, so you take the arm band off, right or the star of David off.
What's the penalty, do you think, for a Jew, that's caught without the yellow star on?
Audience member: Death.
Michael Korenblit: Absolutely, be shot dead. So that was the situation.
Then the Nazis did something else that they did in all the large cities 
and started going into the smaller towns and villages and they started setting up ghettos.
When I say "ghettos" I don't mean like ghettos that you think of today. 
These were segregated areas and many of them like in Warsaw, the large cities, Krakow, 
Lodz, they actually built brick walls walls around these areas where they segregated the Jews.
So no Jew could get out, and nobody else could get in without permission.
Well, it just so happened that in my dad's home town they set up three ghetto areas.
This happens to be the entrance, right here, to my dad's ghetto,
and as you can see the fence right there still up, 
when we went back and visited there back in 1980.
But that was the ghetto area that my dad was in. 
My mom's area, ghetto area, was in another area, and then there was a third ghetto area.
So, here was my dad. They had to work six days a week.
The only day that they had off was on Sunday.
You say, "well that's okay, right? That's when you would go to church, 
that's when you have family time, church time."
What's the holiest day to a Jewish person?
Audience member: Saturday.
Michael Korenblit: Absolutely, so not only were the Jews living under 
the most dehumanizing conditions, they were being forced to break what they felt 
was God's commandment to them of not working on the Sabbath.
One day when my dad and his father and his group were being led out to their work
assignment, my dad watched as two Nazis walked up to a young Jewish mother 
who was carrying her baby in her arms. 
One of the Nazis grabbed the baby from the mother's arms and threw it up 
in the air as high as he could, while the other Nazi preceded to
shoot the baby to see how many times he could hit it before it hit the ground.
Another time my mom's mother sent her on an errand in the ghetto 
and she watched as another Nazi solider walked up
to a young Jewish mother was carrying her baby in her arms.
Grabbed the baby, took it by it's little legs, and walked up to the side of a building,
where he preceded to use the baby, like you would a baseball bat.
And my mother heard him make the comment: "That's one Jew baby 
who won't grow up to be a Jew adult."
Those were the conditions that my parents, my parent's family, and the rest of the Jews 
of my parent's home town, and the rest of the Jews of all of occupied Europe lived under
simply because of who they were.
So, here is my dad has to work seven days a week, six days a week, seventh day he can't be out.
So he can't see his girlfriend, my mother. 
So one night he waits until he's sure that his parents are asleep.
He proceeds to sneak out of his house, avoids the Nazi guards in his ghetto,
crawls under the barbed wire fence, goes around the city, 
crawls under the barbed wire fence of my mother's ghetto, 
avoids the Nazi guards, and sneaks into my mother's house 
so he can spend the evening there with her.
He then gets up very early the next morning and sneaks back the same way 
so that he's there in time to go to work with his father the next day, and not be missing.
And he did this every single night so that he could be with her. 
Then the Nazis started doing something else, they started rounding up small groups of Jews. 
Usually 20, 25 at the time. They were usually the doctors, the lawyers, the rabbis, the teachers.
And they would take these 20, 25 Jews away. 
And when anybody ever asked where they were being taken they were always informed 
that they were being resettled in another part of Poland.
So one Saturday night when my dad didn't have to go to work the next day, 
so he didn't have to hurry to get back, he told his girlfriend, 
my mother, that he wasn't going to stay there that night.
Instead, he was going to sneak out of the ghetto, because he wanted to see 
where the Nazis were taking these small groups of Jews 
and my mom said that she wanted to go with him.
So they took off their armbands with their Star of David on there
so that if anyone saw them they wouldn't know that they were Jew.
And my dad being the little sneak that he was snuck the two of them 
out ofthe ghetto and they made their way about a mile, a mile and a half outside of the city. 
And they waited a ways from the road so they wouldn't be seen.
And sure enough mid-morning, the Nazis come marching down the road, 
with about 20 or 25 Jews and Polish Christians who were collaborating with the Nazis.
And they follow them for about a mile, a mile and a half down the road, 
at a safe distance so they're not seen, and then the Nazis leave the road 
and they go into this big open field, and my mom and dad go into this little forest area
and lay down in the brush so they wouldn't be seen.
And they watched the Nazis march this small group of Jews up to these two large holes 
that formally been foxholes that had been enlarged, and marched the Jews up to those two holes, 
ordered the Jews take off their clothes, and then watched as the Nazis shot them dead, 
and threw them into the holes, and then filled up the holes with dirt.
And my mom, until she passed away, three and a half years ago, and my dad to this day, 
will tell you, that of everything that they experienced and saw during the Holocaust 
in five and a half years, this was the one thing that never left their mind. 
Because after those holes had been filled up with dirt, 
they could still see the ground moving up and down.
Because not everybody who had been shot had been killed, 
and the people who were buried underneath were trying to dig their way out.
Finally, the ground stopped moving as those people died of suffocation.
And my mom and dad knew that they had to go back and tell their parents 
about what they had just seen so they might try and do something to protect their own families.
That very night my dad snuck his own father out of the ghetto 
and they went to a farm about two miles outside of Hrubieszow 
and it was the farm of Josef Wisniewski,
that young farmer that they had become friends with over the years.
Now they hadn't seen Josef in over a year,
because Christians and Jews weren't allowed to be together.
So they had no idea how he would react to them, 
but they knock on his door late at night he came 
and answered the door and he saw them and he immediately grabbed them 
and hugged them and asked them how they were.
At which point my dad then told Josef what he had just seen that day.
And my dad's father looked at this Christian Pole in the eyes and asked him, 
"If the time comes and we need it, would you be willing to help us?"
Without a moment's hesitation, this young Christian Pole said: "Of course," 
and they left it at that. 
Meanwhile, on my mom's side of the family, as I told you my mom's father
was a handyman, a bricklayer, a builder before the war.
Well when the Nazis found this out, they had him do special assignments for them.
They would take him to their homes where they lived, or to the offices, 
or other places where they needed stuff repaired or built.
They would tell him what his work assignment was and they would leave him there.
Come back and get him 12 hours later after the full day.
So after the first day when my mom told her father what she had seen, 
the next day, he was led to his work assignment.
They told him what they wanted done and they left him, and the first thing he did 
looked around the room and he found a single brick.
He picked up that brick and he stuffed it down his pants and he went about his work.
At the end of his shift, he put on his coat.
The Nazis came, they escorted him back to the ghetto.
First thing he did when he got into his house was, went down to the basement, 
pulled the brick out of his pants and hid it away.
He kept doing this every single day until he had enough bricks of the same color
and same texture as the bricks that had built his basement wall.
And then he went down one Sunday and he proceeded to build a false wall in the basement of his house.
And he left just enough room like the chairs that you're sitting on, in between the legs,
so that there would be enough room for each person to lie down 
on the floor and crawl through to the other side.
He then cemented some bricks on to a rod so that when he crawled through 
to the other side, he could take the rod from the inside and pull it in front of the opening, 
so it would look like that was the real wall.
He then began to store some non-perishable food and water behind the wall 
for when the time might come when they would have to hide there.
March 1942, very late at night my dad and his father hear (knocks twice) on the door.
Now, if there is one thing you don't want to hear as a Jew living in the ghetto under
the Nazis late at night is a knock on your door.
My dad and his father went down and they answered the door, 
and standing there is this young 19-20 year young man named Henry Gorski, 
and he is a friend of the family's. They immediately ushered him in.
He was a Christian Pole and they said, "What are you doing here?"
Because if he had been caught sneaking into the ghetto as a Christian 
he would've immediately been shot dead.
And my... this young man looked at them and said, "My father sent me here to warn you 
that the next day the Nazis are going to start rounding up thousands of Jews and take them away."
How did this young man's father know that?
This young man's father happened to be good friends, as I said, with my dad's family.
And what very few people knew is that this young man's father was still the Chief of Police
of the city but what very few people knew is that he was actually working with the Polish underground 
and he had built a hide-out in his attic to hide Jews that the Nazis were looking for.
So he had sent his son there to warn them, so that
they could come to his house, were he could hide them out.
Before my dad left with his family, what do you think he did?
Audience member: (inaudible)
Michael Korenblit: What?
Audience member: Went to get your mother?
Michael Korenblit: Absolutely. He didn't go to get her, he went to go warn her family 
about what was going to happen.
And my mom and her family went down to the basement hideout
where they hid out for 24 hours until it was safe to come out.
And my dad and his family was hidden out in the attic of the Chief of Police's house.
Two weeks later, again, a knock on the door, and again, Gorski's there.
Only this time they think it's not safe for them to go back to the Chief of Police's
house, just in case someone might have seen them or they might
have become suspicious of the Chief of Police.
So it was decided that this time they would go
to another Christian family's house that my dad's family was good friends with.
A man by the name of John Salkie.
John Salkie was also in the Polish government again.
So everyone knew that he was collaborating with the Nazis.
But again, what few people knew was that he was actually working with the Chief of Police, 
with the Polish Underground, he also had built hideout in his attic to hide Jews.
So, it was decided this time they would go to Gorski's house.
Once again, my dad snuck out, to go warn my mom's family.
Only this time, the elderly aunt who lived with them, who I told you before, 
was very sick, even before the war started, just said "no."
She was very weak, she had not gotten medication, very little food, 
and she just said, "I'm just too weak, too tired, too sick to go down.
If they want to take me, let them take me."
So my mom and the rest of her brothers and sisters lined up at her bed, 
they kissed the aunt goodnight, and they went down to the basement hideout.
That would be the last time that they ever saw their aunt again.
The Nazis came into their house the next day and found her lying in the bed and they took her away.
When I was doing research on the book that I wrote about my parents' experience, 
we found out that the Jews of Hrubieszow were taken down 
to the train stations where they were packed into cattle cars.
By the way that's a picture of the Chief of Police, Gorski, right there
and that is his house right there. 
Where they would pack them into cattle cars, 50 at a time.
So you can imagine what it was like on the inside of that cattle car.
And they sent them to a place called Belsik which was 
one of the six extermination camps that that the Nazis set up.
So the Jews of Hrubieszow were immediately sent the gas chambers 
and then to the crematorium to be burned.
Three weeks later, a knock on the door again, only this time it's not Gorski, 
it's Yannick Salkie, the son of the Commissioner of Roads, who hid them out the second time.
Something very important here that I try to emphasize with students and adults: 
Yannick Salkie was 13 years old. Thirteen. 
He knew the risk that he was taking, he knew what would happen 
if he got caught sneaking into the ghetto.
And this 13-year-old boy snuck into the ghetto to warn my dad and his family.
Only this time, he was told by his father, to tell them there would be no tomorrow.
This would be the last deportation.
So this was a time that my dad and his father knew that they would have to go 
to Josef Wisniewski's, that young farmer who almost a year before had said 
he would be willing to help them.
So as my dad's mom was getting his little sisters ready to go, my dad was
standing there with his father and he said, "I have to go see Monya", his girlfriend, 
my mother, "one more time."
And his dad looked at him and said, "Are you crazy?
Have you lost every ounce of brain you have in your head?
The Nazis have encircled the entire city, waiting to catch any
Jew trying to escape and you want to go see your girlfriend again".
And my dad said, "I promise you I will meet you at Josef's."
And he snuck out of the ghetto and made his way to my mom's house one more time.
Now by this time the last 2,000 Jews knew that something was going to happen the next day,
so my mom and her family were already going down to the basement hideout 
when he came bursting into their house.
And my mom, needless to say, was very happy to see him, but she said "What are you doing here?"
And he said "I had to come see you one more time".
And then he said, "I want you to come and hide with me."
And her whole family was standing there and he said, "I want all of you to come hide with me."
And my mom's father thought about it for a moment and then he said, "No." 
He said, "We've been safe here twice before. We'll be safe here again, why don't you stay with us?" 
And my dad thought about it and then he said, "no" because of the promise he made to his father, 
and he was afraid that if he didn't show up at Josef Wisniewski's farm, that his parents
would think that he had gotten caught by the Nazis and killed.
So he looked at this 17-1/2-year-old young woman now again and said "Please come with me."
And she had a decision to make, she had a choice.
She knew that if she went with this young man that she loved as much as her own family, 
this person she loved as much as life itself, this person she wanted to spend the rest 
of her life with, this person that she wanted to have her own family with, 
that if she went with him, she knew she might she never see her mother, her father, 
and the rest of her brothers and sisters ever alive again. 
But she also knew that if she stayed with her family, she might never see this young man again.
And she didn't know what to do.
And the next thing that happened is probably the most incredible thing 
that any human being could possibly do.
I want everybody in this room to think about your own mothers.
The mothers and grandmothers sitting here, think about your own children.
Because her mother took her in her arms and said, "It's okay, go with him.
Maybe if we're separated some of us will have a better chance to survive."
And my mother made the decision to go with him.
Her mother knew that she was probably never ever going to see her young daughter ever again.
And my mother made the decision to go with her boyfriend, my dad.
And just as they were about to leave, they turned and looked at my mom's 14-year-old brother, 
Hyem and they said, "Please come with us."
And my mom and Hyem were very close brother and sister and he said, "Yes. I want to go."
And here was a mother who had just given away her daughter,
knowing she would probably never see her again, but she felt she could do no less for her son 
and she took Hyem in her arms and she hugged him and said: "Go with your sister."
When they left the basement that night, that would be the last time they
ever saw their mother, their father and the rest of their brothers and sisters ever again.
They ran out of water a few days later.
And my mom's father snuck out of the house to go get water and out of the ghetto, 
to get water for his family.
A Polish Christian saw him recognized him, knew he was a Jew, followed him back to his house 
so he would know where it was and then went to the Gestapo headquarters 
and turned them in for the reward.
The Nazis went to the house, searched it, found the basement hideout 
and found them hiding there, and they marched my mom's family outside of the city limits 
where they shot them dead and buried them in a mass grave.
Meanwhile, my mom, my dad and Hyem had made it to meet up with his family.
And what did this young farmer do?
The last time he harvested his hay, instead of taking it to the market to sell to make money,
he started storing it in the back of his farm. 
And then he went out and he started building himself a haystack.
He kept building it and building it and building it until it was like that
'till it was about 10 or 12 feet high. So it had this huge base and it was real firm.
And then he went out one night and he proceeded to dig the inside of that haystack out 
so that there would be enough room for my dad and his family to hide in there and for
the next six and a half weeks.
For 23 hours and 30 minutes of every single day, they hid inside of that haystack.
The only time they came out was very early in the morning or very late at night when,
at risk to their own lives, Gorski, Salkie or Wisniewski would bring them food.
They would go outside get some fresh air, use the bathroom and then go back in 
and wait 'till the next day.
And that's how they lived for six and a half weeks.
And then Gorski informed them, that the Nazis were no longer looking for Jews to hide.
They needed them to work, they'd actually brought Jews back to the ghetto.
But they didn't want old Jews, they didn't want young Jews.
So, my dad's parents were too old and his sisters too young.
So, it was decided, that my mom, my dad and Hyam, would sneak into the ghetto, 
because my dad knew that he could get in and out of the ghetto 
and he could help his parents better from there.
But when my dad left the haystack, that would be the last time he saw his mother,
his father, and his sisters ever alive again.
Gorski told them about another ghetto that was still in existence, a large ghetto, 
so my dad's father thought it would be safer for them there.
They got on a train in this small little village, and the train took off 
and it stopped in their hometown of Hrubieszow, picked up passengers.
Just as the train started to take off, it stopped.
Somebody on the train, another Christian Pole, had recognized my 
dad's family and knew they were Jews.
The Nazis took them off the train and they shot them dead there.
Meanwhile, my mom, my dad and Hyem, my mom's best friend, Toba, 
and 196 other Jews are in the ghetto.
Three months in, the Nazis come in, decide they're going to make a selection process. 
They got too many Jews, not enough work. They line the Jews up.
And one of the Jews of the hundred that's taken away is my mom's brother, Hyem.
And that's to be the last time that she's to see her brother.
Three months later, with no warning, the Nazis come into the ghetto, 
round up the last 100 Jews, including my mom, my dad and my mom's best friend, Toba,
they take them down to the train station and they pack them into a cattle car, just like that.
50 people. There's not enough room for people to sit down, so they're jammed in like sardines.
They put a bucket over in the corner if you had to go to the bathroom, 
but it was so crowded nobody could make their way to the bucket.
So people just used the bathroom standing upright where they were so you can imagine 
what it smelled like, on the inside of that cattle car.
They gave them no food and no water. The train trip, that first one, took over 24 hours.
And finally, the train stopped.
The Nazis opened up the cattle car gates, and took all the Jews off, 
because the train had been stopping and picking up Jews along the way in other villages and towns.
And they marched them to the first of what was to be 13 different concentration, 
labor and extermination camps that my parents were to go through over the next two years.
First place they took them to was a place called Bedzin, Poland.
And as they were taking them into the camp, my dad and mom heard something, this yelling going on.
They couldn't figure out what it was.
Finally, as they got closer to the camp, they could start hearing what was being yelled out.
And what was being yelled out were the family names of people who were inside of the camp,
looking to see if people who were being brought in, were family members 
that they had been separated from.
My mom and dad were immediately taken into the camp and separated into a men's and a women's camp.
My dad hooked up with four young men that he would go through all the camps with.
My mom and her best friend Toba hooked up with three other young women 
that she would go through all the camps with.
On the third night, third morning, after they had been in the camp and hadn't seen each other,
my dad found my mother, finally, in the food line and he asked her where her barrack was.
And she explained where her barrack was located and what the number was.
That night my dad asked his friends if they would cover for him if the Nazis
came in unexpectedly to do a check in there.
And they said, of course, they'd pull the blanket up over them so they couldn't
tell how many Jews were lying there in the bunk.
That night, my dad snuck out of his barrack, avoided the Nazi guards, 
crawled under the barbed wire fence of the men's camp, across the open area, 
under the barbed wire fence of the women's camp, avoided the guards, 
found my mother's barrack where he snuck inside so he could spend the night there with her.
He then got up very early the next morning because there was a roll call before the sun came up 
where all the Jews were taken out, all 25,000 Jews and they were counted 
to make sure every Jew was accounted for.
So he would sneak back the same way so that he was there in time for a roll call the next day.
Because if anybody was missing from roll call, they would have to stand out there until
every Jew was accounted for, no matter the weather. Burning heat, freezing temperatures.
And my dad did this every single night so that he could be with her.
And then one night while he was lying with her, he said for some reason he said, 
"Make me a promise." And she said, "Of course."
He said, "Promise me that if something happens and we're separated,
when this is over you will meet me back in our hometown."
And she said, "Of course." 
Two weeks later the Nazis came into the women's camp, rounded them up and sent them away. 
That would be the last time my mother and father saw each other for almost 18 months.
My mom went on to four more camps.
I don't have time to go into detail about the camps because time is getting late here.
But the camp that she was sent to was a place called the Miellich. 
It was in Miellich that she got the "K" and the "L" tattooed on her wrist 
that I saw as that six-year-old little boy, in Ponca City when I was growing up.
The next camp she was sent to, was a place called Plaszow.
Plaszow, if you may be familiar with, if you saw the movie Schindler's List, 
because that was the camp, that Oskar Schindler save those 1,200 Jews from.
From there she was taken on a train with her four friends and thousands of other Jews 
you put on a train, for a rather long train trip and as the train started slowing down, 
they began to smell something that they had never smelled before.
It was just a terrible odor and they just couldn't figure it out.
Finally the train came to a stop.
The doors were open, the cattle car doors were open, and that smell hit them 100 times worse,
and they could just not figure out what it was.
Thousands of Jews were there. Taken off the cattle cars.
There was an SS colonel standing in front of every single Jew 
and they were paraded in front of him and he simply went 
with his hand to the left or to the right.
97% of the people were immediately sent to the left:
Women with children, babies, young kids, the elderly.
Anybody who didn't look healthy, the handicapped were immediately sent to the left.
My mom and her four friends were lucky, although they didn't know it at the time,
along with some other Jews who were sent to the left.
And they started marching them down this path. There you can see how they're lined up.
And right there, that colonel right there, is making the selection process of which way to go.
There are the barracks that they're being led to, you can see the barbed wire fences 
with the concrete poles there.
In the distance they could see this smoke coming out and they couldn't figure out what it was, 
and finally they were taken into their barracks, and the women inside of the barracks informed them 
that they had just been brought to a place called Auschwitz-Birkenau.
The smell that they had been smelling even as this train was still traveling 
and not even inside the camp yet, 
was the smell of the burning bodies from the Jews that had been taken from the gas chambers.
So, my mom knew, when she found somebody in the camp who had known her brother Hyem, 
they said they had taken him away the day before she got there. She knew what that meant.
Again, I don't have time to go into detail about what it was like in the camps.
But just to give you an example of one incident that happened to my mom, 
something happened in the last camp she was in.
And as her punishment, instead of just taking her out and shooting her, they like to make you suffer.
They took her outside, in sub-freezing weather, and they made her kneel down 
in three feet of snow, and they told her that if she as much moved a muscle 
that the guards in the tower would immediately shoot her dead and she had to kneel 
in sub freezing weather in three feet of snow for 24 hours. God only knows how she survived.
But with the help of her friends she finally was able to get back up on her feet
and out to work again after three days. Otherwise, she would have been shot dead.
My mom was liberated by the Russian forces in March of 1945.
When she was liberated, you all, she was 20-1/2 years old, she was 5'1" and weighed 68 pounds.
Meanwhile, my dad had gone through seven more camps with his buddies.
Three times he was nearly beaten to death.
One time he was beaten so badly that his friends had to literally drag him out 
to the roll call, and shoulder-to-shoulder hold him up.
Because if he'd have fallen down, they would have shot him dead.
And they helped nourish him back, after hiding him in the barrack each day, 
so that he could go back to work.
My dad and his friends eventually went through seven more camps, as I said, 
the most famous that you might know about is a place called Flossenburg in Germany, 
Matthausen in Austria, Dachau in Germany, which was the first one set up.
And then eventually he was liberated by the American forces on a death march.
When my dad was liberated in April of 1945, he was not quite 20 years old, 
he was 5'9" and he weighed 78 pounds.
My parents' story is a story about three miracles.
The first is the fact that they even survived the war at all.
The second, is that they found each other, after the war, got reunited, moved to Germany 
where they lived for four and a half years, had a baby, my brother, who was born in Germany, 
then immigrated to the United States of America, where I don't have time to tell you 
but I will tell you this:
Of all places, they were put on a train and they were sent to Ponca City, Oklahoma.
(laughter)
The third miracle happened 39 years later, when I was doing research on the book 
and I found my mother's brother, Hyem who we thought had died 39 years before, 
alive and well and living in New Castle, England.
And on January the 30th 1982, after 39 years of separation, my mother 
and her brother saw and touched each other for the first time.
When I was seven years old, again this goes back to why the foundation was created, 
who my parents are, which really tells you my parents are, and why we set up the foundation.
When I was seven years old in August of 1958, my dad
saw something on TV when he came home from work.
And he watched the news story on TV, and the next day he read about it in the paper.
And he continued to see the news stories, and it really bothered him.
And the first time he had off from work was that Saturday afternoon.
And I was playing in the backyard and he came to me and said, 
"Mike, come and take a ride with your mom and me."
I said "Okay. Great."
So I got in the car with my parents, and they drove me to a park.
Parked the car and we got out, and we walked into the park 
and they walked me up to a water fountain.
My dad said "Take a drink out of the water fountain."
I took a drink out of the water fountain, he said "How did that taste?"
Great, hot August day in Oklahoma, what could be better than cold water from the water fountain?
My dad then asked me to read the sign on the water fountain to him.
And I read it to him and it said: "Whites only."
They then walked me to a water fountain not ten feet away 
and they asked me to take a drink out of it. And I did.
And they said, "How did that taste?"
And I said, "The same as the water that I just drank out over there."
And he asked me to read the sign on the water fountain to him.
And I read it to him, and it said "Colored's only."
Without saying a word we walked back to the car and my parents drove me down to the bus station.
Parked the car, we walked inside, there was this podium with a stand on it.
Nice area, nice chairs, ceiling fans going on this hot August day.
Walked up the podium, the sign, the stand, and my parents said,
"We want you to read the sign with us." Together the three of us read that sign.
And it said: "White Waiting Area."
My parents then walked me to the back of the bus station, to a not-so-nice area, 
with broken chairs, no ceiling fans going and there was a sign tacked up on the wall. 
And again my parents said, "Read the sign with us." 
And the three of us read the sign together and it said: "Colored Waiting Area."
And my dad looked at me, his 7-year-old son, and he said,
"I want you to always remember what I've shown you here today. 
Because that's the reason you don't have any grandparents, and lots of aunts 
and uncles and cousins, because people looked at them as
being different and inferior human beings.
And whatever you do as you go through life, whenever you see something 
that is not right, you have a responsibility and that responsibility 
is to speak out about what's going on.
That's why the Respect Diversity Foundation was created - just to try
to teach young people and others the importance of how we look at each other as human beings.
I know I don't have time to go through a lot of the stuff, 
but I will with just a couple of things real quickly.
After World War II, and what we saw at the Holocaust, the world said, 
"Never again would we ever allow something like this to happen."
Never again, President Lyndon Johnson, 1968 Nigeria.
Over 1 million ethnic Ibos are murdered by their own government.
Never again, President Richard Nixon 1971, 
1-2 million Bengalis are murdered by the Pakistani government.
President Richard Nixon, 1972, Burundi in Africa.
The Tutsi government murders over 200,000 of its own ethnic Hutu citizens.
Never again, President Gerald Ford, 1975-6, 
over 1 million Cambodians are murdered by their own government, the Khmer Rouge, 
and once again the United States and the rest of the world sits back and watches.
Never again, President Jimmy Carter, 1977-9, 
1-2 million more Cambodians are murdered by their own government, the Khmer Rouge.
Never again, President Ronald Reagan, 1988, Iraq.
Thousands of ethnic Kurds are murdered by their own government and Saddam Hussein.
Anybody know how the Kurds were murdered? Famous pictures of it. 
They were gassed. And once again the United States looked back.
Never again, President George H.W. Bush, 1989-92, Iraq, 
thousands of more ethnic Kurds are murdered, as the United States 
and the rest of the world sits back and watches.
Again President Bush, 1991-2, Bosnia, 
over 100,000 Muslims are murdered by Christian Serbs, as the world sits back and watches.
President Bill Clinton, never again 1993-5, Bosnia, 
another 150-200,000 Muslims are murdered by Christian Serbs.
1998-9, Kosovo, over 25-50,000 Ethnic Albanian Muslims are murdered by Christian Serbs.
We don't know the total numbers there yet, you all, because they are still digging up bodies in Kosovo.
President Bill Clinton 1994, Rwanda.
800,000 ethnic Tutsi are murdered by their own Hutu government in 93 days.
The Holocaust is considered from September 1st, 1939 to May 8th, 1945 when the Nazis surrendered.
In that time period, 6 million Jews were murdered, in five and a half years.
You all, the world sat back and watched, as almost a million people were murdered in 93 days.
What does that mean? That was 8,602 people a day, 358 people an hour,
and six people were murdered every single minute 
and the world sat back and watched after saying "never again."
President George W. Bush, 2003-9, in the Darfur region of the Sudan, 
over 700,000 ethnic Sudanese are murdered by their own government, and 1-2 million have been displaced.
President Barrack Obama, never again, from January 20th, 2009 to the present day, 
as we sit in here on November the 8th, 2011, in the Darfur region of the Sudan, 
another 200-300,000 ethnic Sudanese have been murdered by their own government
and another 2-3 million have been displaced.
That's why what happened to my parents over 70 years ago is important 
to each of us sitting here in this room.
I talked to you about how the Holocaust started, you all, it didn't start with the mass murder.
It started with the simple act of harassment and bullying.
50% of high school students have either been one, or had been bullied in high school.
160,000 stay away from school every single day because of bullying, and what goes on.
Every seven minutes a student is bullied, which means in the time that we've been sitting in here, 
you all, eight students have been bullied at school, which has a dramatic effect on their life.
The last thing I like to end with, with the students is to give them three numbers.
Which I will end with you all, too.
I just don't have time to go through all this, I'm sorry.
1-1/2 million. 1-1/2 million are the number of children who were murdered in the Holocaust.
Young people who never had the opportunity to contribute to their families, 
to their communities, to their churches, to their synagogues, to their countries.
1-1/2 million children, from newborn babies to 18 years old, 1-1/2 million.
Next number: 1,029.
Those are the number of children aged five and under in Africa and Asia 
who have starved to death while I have been standing here talking to you today.
And you say, "What does that possibly have to do with the Holocaust?"
It has everything in the world to do with the Holocaust 
because it has to do with how we look at other people.
Especially when they're different from us; religiously, ethnically, color-wise, 
and what we're willing to do or not do.
And the last number is 188,000.
That's the number of children here in the state of Oklahoma who will go to bed hungry tonight.
That's why what happened to my parents over 70 years ago is important to every single person sitting here.
And that's why I appreciate so much for those of you who work for DHS 
because of how much work you all do with those people here in the state of Oklahoma.