He Survived One Holocaust - He's Concerned About Another

Welcome to the program.

This is Peter Rosenberger. Glad to have you with us. I am joined today with a very special guest, Jochen Werfel. He is the young age of 92 and has an amazing story of endurance, being successful, of coming from unimaginable hardship. And I'm taking a break from the normal content I do. I think as a caregiver, for me, it's important and it's helpful for me to hear other people's stories. Sometimes I get so wrapped up in my own that I need to hear, I need to have my thoughts broadened a bit by hearing the journey of other people. And Mr. Werfel's journey is extraordinary.

And I want to hear what he has to say on life, love, patriotism, and anything else that's on his heart. So Mr. Werfel, I am really honored that you would be here today. You survived the Holocaust and you came here at what, age 17?

Is that right? I was 17, yes. Tell us your story.

What happened? And then what has happened since? And then what are your thoughts? Because as we're leading up to the one year anniversary of October 7th, I know you have some very serious thoughts on this.

And so I want to delve into all of that as best as possible. But give us a little bit of your background and your family's background. Yeah, Peter. I was born June 15 in 1932. And I was born at my grandmother's house in Germany. Although my family, my father, mother, my brother and I, we lived in Austria. My father worked in Vienna. He worked for the president of Austria, Mr. Schuschnick. We had a wonderful life for a few years in Austria when I was very little.

Then came the news that Hitler was coming into Austria and taking Austria over, making it part of Germany. So my father and my mother were very, very worried about us. I should tell you that my mother was Jewish. My father was Catholic. When they got married, he was taken out of the Catholic Church.

He was asked to leave the church. Before Hitler came into Austria, which was a terrible time, my father decided that we should be safer in Berlin where my grandparents lived at that time. Now, it's strange to think that you would be safer there, but at the time, Berlin was safer than a place where Hitler was walking in with his troops and so on, as in Gestapo. So Peter and I, my brother and I, were sent to Berlin to live with my grandparents. My mother went into exile in Czechoslovakia in Prague because at that time Prague was pretty safe.

She went there. My father, at that time, still continued working for the government. When Hitler came into Austria, my father and Mr. Schuschnick, the president of Austria, both of them were immediately taken to a train and put into a concentration camp called Sachsenhausen, which is right north of Berlin.

Just a couple miles north of Berlin. My father was there for quite a while. My father was now a political prisoner. Peter and I lived with our grandparents for a year or two in Berlin. And we had a wonderful time with my grandparents. My grandfather took us to the zoo every Sunday and bought us ice cream and we went for long walks with him. And it was a very, very nice life with my grandparents. Were you allowed to in any way have any communication with your father?

No. We had no conversation, nothing at all with my father. He was in Sachsenhausen in the concentration camp and we could not talk to him or in any way communicate with him. So then my grandfather, things were getting worse in Berlin too, so my grandfather decided that the boys, my brother and myself, that we should be somewhere safer. Number one, my parents, when they took us to Berlin, they went to baptize both of us in a Catholic church. This was very smart and very good because now we were Catholic. We were no longer Jewish because my mother was Jewish and when your mother is Jewish, you are considered Jewish.

So now we were Catholic. And he sent us to a camp where he knew some people because he had been stationed there near there when he was in the army in the German army in the First World War. So we went to this camp.

This camp was run by a wonderful lady called Erma Franssenheinrichstorf and we called her Aunt Erma and she really became like my second mother because we were only supposed to be there for a few weeks until things would normalize somehow. But, well, I didn't leave there until I was 17 years old and I was six years when I got there. When I was in Berlin, I started school. I started school in Berlin. But during my first school year, we moved to Dangest, which is in northern Germany, right on the North Sea. And Dangest is the name of this little town where Tunde Erma had her camp for children and they would be sent there in the summer to have a good time because it's right on the North Sea.

It was only a block from the beach. It was a beautiful place, a beautiful place and a beautiful beach. So we lived there, you know, for quite a while. And then my mother, then Hitler decided to also invade the Czech Republic. Well, with a lot of Jewish people there, and immediately all the Jewish people, of course, were imprisoned. And my mother had to come back or go somewhere else to hide from the Germans in Prague, in the Czech Republic where she lived for two years. And she came back to her parents who still lived in Berlin at the time.

It was very difficult to travel in any way at that time. So she came back somehow on a coal train. How she managed that, I really don't know. But it was a train carrying coal into Germany and she came back on that train. And she then decided that she wanted to live with her two boys for a little while. So she got an apartment in Berlin, and she called Tunde Erma in the summer camp and asked her to send us to Berlin, so we could live with her for just a little while anyway.

So we did, and we lived with our mother. One day my mother gave us a job and she said, here, take this letter. I want you to deliver that to someone. And this letter, you get for the delivery by subway in Berlin. You take the subway from here to another place, and we changed subways, and finally we went to our final subway destination. And we came up the steps, and there was a gentleman who had a code word that was given to us by our mother, and we were to give the letter to him.

So all of that worked out and this gentleman gave a letter to us to take to my mother. So we took the subway back and as we came out of the subway, which was right around the corner from where we lived, it's a big apartment house where my mother rented an apartment. And all of a sudden we saw in front of the apartment house, a number of SS and Gestapo cars. So we thought, well, let's wait here on the corner and see what's happening there, what they are doing.

And so we did. And we had just no idea why the Gestapo was there or the SS, you know, there were a lot of people living in that building. Well, to our surprise, it was my mother, and they arrested my mother, put her in a Gestapo car and drove her away. Eventually, after she was brought into a Gestapo jail in Berlin, she was taken to Auschwitz, where she was killed eventually. Did you ever talk with her again after she was arrested?

Well, yes. It took us three days, my brother and myself, to find out which prison my mother was taken to. There were several Gestapo prisons and SS prisons in Berlin. So we found out and we went, as little kids, we went to the prison. We just walked in, looked out of the window as we got upstairs, and we saw down below that people were walking in a big park. And we looked and we saw my mother, and we waited until our mother walked back into the building. And then we walked from floor to floor to see if we could find our mother.

And the Gestapo and SS who was guarding there, they were at that point not paying any attention to us. We were just little kids, you know. Were you older than Peter? My brother is a year and a half older than I am. Okay, so you guys were just teenagers. So he'll be 14 next January, yeah.

Yeah, or 94, rather, excuse me. And he's still alive? Oh yes, yeah. He's still alive. We're both alive. However, he lives in Australia, so we can't see each other anymore because neither of us can travel at this point at our age, you know. But we get to talk to each other on the telephone.

So, yeah. You were able to go see your mother, was that the last time you saw her? Was that the Gestapo prison? We saw my mother. We found her. We found herself. We talked to her briefly. She simply said, boys, you can't be here. You shouldn't have come here because if they catch you here, the same thing is going to happen to you that's happening to me.

So I want you to be good, take care of your schoolwork, learn a lot, do the best you can in school, and now go home, leave, and be safe. Was there any thought at that time of you guys trying to get to America? Had that not come into the conversation yet? No, that's much, much later.

America. You were just little kids, and this is the last time you saw your mother. She was Jewish. Your father was Catholic.

He was a political prisoner. Were you and your brother labeled as Jewish during this time? Well, we were Catholic. So whenever someone asked us who we were and where our papers were, they would always show Catholic. So that's one of the things that saved us. Another thing is the lady in the summer camp, she also knew who we were because she had known my grandfather during the World War when he was stationed there.

So in that respect, we were saved because of the Catholicism, you know, because of our baptism. And this was your grandfather that was in the war. This was the Great War, World War I, but he was your father's father. My mother's father. So he was Jewish. Very Jewish.

Okay. And so he fought in the Great War, and he knew this lady that ran the camp. And people began to disappear. And all of a sudden, some of our relatives disappeared. And eventually, sadly enough, our grandparents disappeared also. So everybody, all of my relatives, my uncles, my aunts, my nephews, my cousins, everybody disappeared and was taken to a concentration camp. And they all died.

They were all killed. Did your father's parents at any point try to reach out to you all to take care of you? Or were they involved? You know, I never met my father's parents. They were Austrian.

I have no idea. I do know that he had four brothers who left before Hitler came into Austria and went to Spain and from Spain to Cuba and then to Ecuador in South America. And they spent the rest of their life in Ecuador. They built a business there. They married there. They raised their families there. Those were my father's brothers. He had two sisters. Both of them became Catholic nuns. But you've never had any dealings with them? No dealings with any of them. I guess I was six years old when I went first to school and then to the camp.

I guess there really was no time. We lived in Germany. We lived in Austria at that time, but never met my grandparents on my father's side. I really don't know what happened to them.

Later on in life, I went back to where they used to live, to their house and so on, but I couldn't find out anything further about my grandparents' parents and my uncles, except I had some contact, of course, with my relatives in Quito after the war. So because you were baptized, you were not targeted and you were not practicing your Jewish faith at this point? No, I never did. So because you were baptized, you were able to be overlooked?

Yes. Well, there were two other things that saved us. Number one is Tanta Irma, the lady of the camp where we lived up on the North Sea, up on the beach. She knew who we were. And several times over the years, the Gestapo, the SS would come to her house and say, who are these children who live here? And she would tell them, well, you know, I got a summer camp and all of that. And these boys over here, I adopted them.

They're my boys and so on. She also had two children of her own. So she took a big chance in hiding us, in keeping us, because if they would have found out that our mother was Jewish, she would have been considered the same way. She would have ended up in a concentration camp because she was saving us, two Jewish boys. So, yeah, those were all extremely difficult times, you know. My brother and I, every so often, we had no relatives left at this point, except Tanta Irma, who knew that we were Jewish.

Oh, yeah. And the other thing that also helped us tremendously, our teacher in this little village, this little village had a school that consisted of two rooms, two classrooms. One was for grade one to four and the other one was from five to eight. And that's where we went to school with all the local village children. And none of the other children knew that you were Jewish.

No, of course not. No one else knew. However, my teacher, who was an SS individual.

Oh, my. Yeah, he was, was very friendly with Tanta Irma and somehow found out that we were Jewish, but didn't say a word about it. Didn't say a word about it. Now, you knew you were Jewish.

Pardon? You and Peter both knew that you were Jewish. Well, of course we did. And so, but that was something you just had to keep tight lipped about.

Oh, my God, yes. How did he find out about it? The teacher? Yes, the SS teacher.

Tanta Irma. And she just blurted it out or? Well, they were friends. They knew each other very well.

And he was my teacher. So in the morning at eight o'clock, we would go to school. We would sing German songs, anti-Jewish songs, the danger of the Jews and kill the Jews and all that sort of thing. And, well, we just sang. We had no choice. We had to sing along with all the other children about these terrible songs, you know. And we knew what was going on. Peter and I, it was amazing how much we knew, but we knew what happened with Hitler and what happened with the Nazis and what happened with our family and where they were and that they were killed or being killed. So we knew all that. We had to, you know, it was difficult for us at that age, of course. I don't even have the words. I mean, the bravery and the presence of mind that you and Peter had to do this, to stand up to that is extraordinary.

And you were still less than 15 years old at this time. Yes. Yeah. And here's one other thing. The lady who took care of the camp, Tantaroma, she had, as I mentioned, two of her own children who were in the Hitler Youth. And she said to us, in order to save you, you have to join the Hitler Youth.

Because if you don't, people will ask, well, why are these two boys not going to the meetings? Why don't they belong to the Hitler Youth? So we also joined the Hitler Youth. Father and I were part of the Hitler Youth. We were Catholic. Tantaroma was, knew that we were Jewish.

My teacher knew that he was Jewish. He was amazing. It was absolutely. Well, now your name is Joachim. What were they, what were they calling it? Were they calling you by that name? Oh, yes. Yeah.

They called me by the name of Joachim. Yeah. Okay.

Yeah. Hepa name. And the name Werfel is an Austrian name.

So no one had any problem with that. My father was not Jewish, you know. Well, my last name is Rosenberger. Your name is Jewish. People have often thought I was, but we come, my family comes from a very long German line there in Germany.

Yeah, sure. But, you know, well, that's it. And so here you are, and you finished out your schooling? Were you able to finish your schooling there? I kept going to school, and I was finished in the eighth year of my school. In Germany at that time, when you finished your eighth year, your eighth grade, you go to work and learn a profession.

Unless your parents had some money or someone sent you to a higher school or gymnasium or whatever they called it in Germany at that time. But of course, there was no money. My grandfather, in the meantime, no longer lived.

So I was getting any money anymore. And she kept us all those years as her own children. She was just a wonderful lady. And, you know, I really have to thank her for my life. Wow. And subsequently your whole family's life and your brother's family.

And that's an amazing thing that she did. At what point did you realize it? What trade did you go learn? What trade? Yeah, after your eighth year.

Oh, yeah. After my eighth year, my trade was working on farms and going out on fishing boats. Remember, during the war, none of the working men were still at home. They were all in the military.

So all of the jobs, all of the business were run by very old people or by very young people. So I worked every day after school. Either I was assigned to a farm and worked on the farm or I would go out on a shrimp boat, which was my favorite thing to do. And I did that for a couple of years, three years. Did Peter do that with you? Peter had to do the same thing.

Okay. He didn't like the boating, but he had to work on the farm, you know. Were you able to be paid wages for that? No. No, we were paid nothing. We were just working for the victory of the war. We were in the Hitler Youth. We worked for the Hitler Youth.

You know, we worked for the victory, for the German victory. That's what they told us. That's what we were doing. This must have caused such internal conflict with you.

Yeah. I often wonder how my brother and I, how we were able to live with all of that because we were so young and we knew everything. We knew what was going on, you know. We knew what happened to our family.

We knew what happened to our parents and so on, you know. It was just amazing. By the way, I want to be sensitive. Do you need some water or anything? Do you want to take a break? I don't need it. If you do, let's take a break. No, no. I'm good.

I'm good. So, this went on, you worked, you went to school, and then at what point did you and Peter look at each other and say, we've got to leave Germany? Well, not until after the war. There was no way during the war, you know, during the Holocaust period to get away from Germany for us. There was no way. So, you know, through the entirety of the war, you were in this set of circumstances where you had to live a double life as a Jew but having to participate in the craziness and the rabid hatred of the culture.

Exactly. And the war ended. At what point did you, when you left there to go to America, or did you go to America first?

Well, no. When the war was over, there were several years we were still in Germany. There was just no way to get away. You have to remember there were millions of Germans and people from all over the place who would have liked to have gone to America at that point, you know. The war was just a terrible thing. Families were all half killed, half living.

It was just a terrible time, you know. I remember Peter and I, what we did during the war, we, sometimes at night, we would turn on the radio and listen to BBC, British Broadcasting Company, to find out what was really going on in the world. We didn't know. We were just hoping, hoping that the Allies, the Americans, and the British, and the French would finally come into Germany and get rid of Hitler, you know.

That was just a hope. And so what we did, we listened to the British Broadcasting Company, so one night we were sitting there and we heard that the American troops had landed on Omaha Beach, in the Normandy, in France, on Omaha Beach and some of the other beaches there. And they had landed and had made, you know, were able to establish themselves on the beach and were marching slowly but surely fighting into France.

And that just made us so happy, you know. We knew that eventually, once the Allies would be in Europe on the land somewhere and fighting the Germans, that the Germans would, they were also, if you remember, fighting in Russia at the time. So they had the Russian front, they had the Italian front, and they had the French front.

And they just couldn't fight all of these. No, you had to listen, you're finding this out from the BBC, but did you have to listen to the BBC in secret? Oh, absolutely. And so you're happy that the Allies are coming, but you can't tell anybody. You can't act like it.

No. No, we couldn't. They were just for us. How, I am just astonished by the presence of mind that you and your brother had to be able to maintain that fortitude. We wanted to live.

This was the only way. If we wouldn't have done that, we would have ended up like the rest of our family. So we were the only two who survived the war, who survived all of those times. And I was telling you the story, so we listened on BBC, and yeah, the Allies have landed.

Now I tell you a little story, a little out of time. I finally get to America after the war, and I'll get into that a little later again. We get to America.

I'm in America for three years. I finally get a job there. I finally learn English.

And guess what? I get drafted during the Korean War into the American Army. So now I'm in the American Army, ready to go to Korea, and they sent me to Kentucky, where the first infantry, the first airborne division, basic training. So I went through all that basic.

I know that base well. Do you really? Yes. So... 101st. Exactly.

Clarksville, Tennessee, and right there at the Kentucky border of Tennessee. Yes. Well, I would imagine serving in the United States Army was a whole lot more pleasant than serving in the Hitler Youth. I didn't want to particularly go to Korea and fight, and I didn't. They finally discovered from my papers that I speak German, and the American Army said to me, rather than going to Korea, we need you in Germany because we need translators over there. We're training the Germans again to have a part of an allied army to defend against the Russians.

They're right there. When were you in Germany? Pardon? As a U.S. soldier. When were you in Germany as a U.S. soldier? What year? In 1953. My father was there around that time. Really? He was a signal operator with the Army.

How about that? He was there close to your time, maybe a little bit after that. I was wondering why you knew the first airborne division. Well, I lived in Nashville for many, many, many years, and so we were up at Fort Campbell a lot. I've had family members that have gone through and lived up there that have been in the service. My wife and I have spent a lot of time up there with different groups and speaking and working with wounded warriors and so forth, so I know it very well.

It's a beautiful area, but Dad came out of Fort Gordon where they did signal training in Georgia. I see. Yeah.

I believe. And then he was over there in Augusta, and then he was in Germany, if not at the same time, right behind you. Or at what point did you let the secret out that you were Jewish?

I really didn't. Even when you came to America and you were serving? Well, you know, the American government, the American Army really brought my brother and myself to Germany. They paid for it. They took care of us. They found out who my father was and what happened to my family and our mother and so on, and they volunteered to take us to Germany. There was an organization that was financed by the Catholics and the Jewish people, and it was called the United States Committee for Care of European Children. And under that committee, we were invited to come to the United States, and the U.S. government, whoever, paid for it. But the U.S. government was responsible for us. Well, if you don't mind me jumping around in time a little bit, I wanted to ask you some very pointed questions.

Your background and your story, and I know that you came here after the Army, you've flown planes, you've been a very successful businessman, and you've built a great life here in America. Yes. I've got to ask you, Jack, I've got to ask you, when you see what is going on in our culture, particularly on our college campuses, and the rabid hatred towards Jews, where does your mind go at this moment?

What are your thoughts on that? Well, I'm very, very disappointed, and I came to this country and there was no such thing. To be in America was everybody's dream over in Germany at that time. Everybody would want to come over here, and I came over here, and the freedom, you could do whatever you wanted to do, the laws, everything. I didn't have to worry about everybody who wore a uniform, you know, that they were going to catch us, and so on. So, it was the greatest thing that ever happened to me when I landed in New York. I was just so happy, you know, so happy. I told you about listening to the BBC.

Yes, sir. At that point, I was about, I don't know, 14 years old when we heard that. Then, I'm in the United States and I get drafted into the U.S. Army. I'm sent to Germany. I'm working for the U.S. Army as an interpreter, and I also became a specialist in classification assignment, which meant that our division, the 1st Infantry Division is the one that I was stationed with. The 1st Infantry Division, which was a great division, had me working as a, you know, classification assignment, which means we got so many new troops every week or every month, while others would go home because they finished their length of service.

So, I would walk from my office to our billets, to, you know, where we slept and so on, and where our company office was. So, one day someone said, hey, the company commander of headquarters company, that's what I was in the headquarters company, wants to see you. So, I went to see the commander, and he said, Corporal Werfel, I've been watching you for a while coming from your workplace back to the billets over here, and I've noticed that you have a very straight, proper walk. And I have an idea, and you can say yes or no, I would like for you to be in the color guard of the 1st Infantry Division.

Now, this is 20,000 men, you know. So, I said, yeah, it would be an honor for me to be the color guard and carry the American flag, you know. So, I became the color guard individual, and I loved it, you know. Were you ever treated poorly while in the U.S. Army because you were German?

No, not at all. As a matter of fact, I became an American citizen while I was in the Army in Germany. There was a public lock under Eisenhower's time when he was president, where they passed a law where if you had lived in the United States for a couple of years, and you served in the military service, in the American military, that you were eligible to apply for a citizenship rather than wait a normal five years. So, I became a citizen in Frankfurt, Germany. That's where I was sworn in. At 92 years old, you were the color guard, and certainly listening to this, oh no, you weren't a color guard at 92, but what do you think of when you see the flag even now at 92? Oh, it's a flag of my life, a flag of my happiness, you know. I mean, there are some horrible things going on right now, and we'll get to that in a minute, but now I get drafted into the Army, of course, and I'm in the color guard and all of that. And one day, the company commander tells me that, well, you are going to the Normandy, to France. I said, I am?

Why? Well, the entire color guard is, because it's a 10-year anniversary of D-Day, which was the day that I listened to the ABC, remember? And believe it or not, I went to the Normandy and marched up and down in front of Eisenhower and Churchill and de Gaulle and all of those people all came for the 10-year anniversary. Thousands, thousands of people. How many people knew your story at that point? No one.

No one really knew. This was just a coincidence. You know, all of a sudden, you know, I'm in the color guard because I happened to walk straight and it was such an honor for me. And now, all of a sudden, I'm being sent to the 10-year anniversary and I'm marching in front of all these thousands and thousands of people carrying the American flag.

I can't tell you the pride. You know, one morning, I remember at five o'clock in the morning, they woke us up and they said, we want you on the beach. You got to with the color guard. President Roosevelt had a son who was killed at Normandy and he was buried right there on the beach. That's where his grave was. And we, the color guard, had to go there. And this is right on the beach, right on the English Channel. And we were there, the four of us, with the color guard. And we had someone there with us who played the play tap. And I'll never forget that moment that we stood there and the sun is rising, the sun is rising over the channel and it's such a beautiful morning, six o'clock in the morning.

There's no one else but us, the color guard, and honoring, you know, the son of the president of the United States. And it was just so fabulous. I mean, every time I think about it now, I still get goosebumps, you know. It had to have been an extraordinary moment for you because of just 10 years prior, you're huddled listening to the BBC in secret.

You cannot rejoice. And here you are on parade in front of everybody. That's an extraordinary moment. And that's why I wanted to, just wanted to mention, tell you the end of the story here, yeah. So I think it's just amazing how it all worked out, you know. And a matter of fact, I have a movie now of the whole 10 year anniversary that my secretary found on, what is it, YouTube or one of those television programs.

And there was the entire 10 year anniversary. And I have that now and I see myself walking with, you know, carrying the American flag. It was just great. It was just marvelous. But anyway, yeah, to go back to Germany, when finally the war was over, the Americans offered us to come to New York. We went to New York and it was wonderful, you know, and I had absolutely no papers, nothing.

The army brought us over so quickly. We were in New York with no papers. But we were together with about 30 or 40 other children who, if I can call myself a child at that time, because at that time, we were all there without papers and the government told us, we'll take care of you, but you got to wait here.

Eventually you can go anywhere you want in the United States, but at this moment you got to stay here. And they gave us a nice place to live, all 30 children together in a large building, nice building in the Bronx. And as soon as we get your papers, we'll let you know.

The papers finally came after six months. But during those six months, I got to know New York pretty well. We traveled everywhere, you know. What did you think of New York? I loved it.

Absolutely loved it. What I couldn't get over were all the cars and the skyscrapers. You know, I'd seen a few American cars before when I was in the army, but nothing, millions and millions of cars, wonderful highways and all of that, you know, it was just amazing. So what about the food?

Oh, yeah. You know, I mean, during the war, we hardly had any food. You know, the main food that we had were rabbits and the rabbits that we would raise behind our house in little cages. We would always have 30, 40 rabbits. And every night we had to go out after we finished our work and find rabbit food and feed them. So that on Sunday, every Sunday, it was my job to kill a rabbit and skin it and prepare it for cooking.

And the whole family together would eat one little rabbit on Sundays. You know, I mean, food was just so. Once we came over here, I had everything.

Everything. I was able to go to school. I was able to get a job. I was able to live wherever I wanted to live, as long as I had the money and so on.

It was just a wonderful, wonderful life, you know. And you can, yeah, I think you can understand my disappointment today when I say. When I hear your story, I can only try to imagine how much sorrow you must have at looking at New York and what it's become and looking at our universities and looking at our political system and the disrespect of the flag and the institutions of this country and knowing what the backdrop. And then here we are at the one year anniversary of October 7th. Yes.

And I'd like to close out this time right now. Just address those issues. I mean, look at the landscape of America. Look at Israel.

Look at the culture of what's happening with the Jewish people now as somebody who's been through this horror before. What are your what are your thoughts? Yeah, well.

I am very disappointed and I felt very disappointed. I'd like to tell you one little story. All my life that I was in the United States, people always said to me, Jack, you had an amazing life coming over here and you ought to write a book about your life. You write a book, you know, and I always said, listen, there were millions of people. The same thing happened to I'm sure there's someone there who can write a book better than I can.

But so I never wrote the book when I was 90 or 91 years old. Three years ago, two years ago, my daughter, Dana, who's right here with me. Kept said one day to me, Dad, you got to sit down and think about our wish. We want you to write a book so that our family and our children and our grand, great grandchildren and so on, that everybody knows what happened to our family. Why did we come to America?

How did we come to America? And so on. Well, if there's only one person in the world that I cannot say no to, and that's my daughter, Dana. So I said, OK, I'll try. It won't be good because I'm not a writer. So I wrote this book called My Two Lives.

That's what I named it because I had one life. In Germany. During the Holocaust, and I had this wonderful life in the United States and I was very successful in the United States, which I could have never done in Germany. So I wrote this book. And this book came out, was published, was printed the day, the day this major problem started where Hamas, you know, killed a hundred, killed a thousand, what was it, fifteen, eighteen hundred Jews or something like that, which was the worst thing that happened to the Jewish people ever since the Holocaust. Exactly.

Since the Third World War, you know. And then, as you mentioned before, the universities and the colleges and the teachers from the colleges were asked to come before Congress and explain what happened. What are we going to do about it?

What's going on? They had no answer. I listened to them. They had no answer. They didn't say that that was terrible and that was just and that was that, you know. Because of the background you have, do you consider silence being complicit? When somebody is brought before Congress and they have no answer and they have no condemnation, do you look at that lack of condemnation, that silence about this issue as being complicit with the evil that's going on? Somewhat, yeah.

I can understand that because I think... I have to be honest. You have to be honest because, Peter, the same thing happened in Germany, happened in the Third Reich with Hitler. Look, Germany was very prosperous. The Jews were very prosperous. The Jews were in all the wonderful positions. They were teachers. They were writers. They were musicians. The Jewish had a wonderful life and they worked very hard and really pushed to get their children educated.

Education was number one with the Jewish people at that time and look what happened to them. And now all of a sudden I see this business coming up here in the United States, my country, my new country that I'm so proud of. And I see what's happened at the universities, at the colleges and so on, you know. So it really hurts.

It hurts and I'm really concerned and worried about it. And that's why this book that I wrote about my life... The book is called My Two Lives and it's available wherever books are sold.

You can certainly get it on Amazon. I'm going to give you a quote and I want to hear your thoughts on this quote from Churchill, who I'm a big fan of. He said, the malice of the wicked is reinforced by the weakness of the virtuous.

Oh. What a quote, huh? Yeah, that's a tremendous quote. And we cannot afford to be weak. We can't sit by and cluck our tongues and say that's a shame. If we do not stand up against this evil, you've known this because of personal thing. This evil has to be confronted, otherwise it will grow. Is that a fair statement?

Absolutely. That's what I'm afraid of, you know. And with my little book, that book was really just for the family.

It was for my family, for my kids, for my grandkids and so on. But somehow the book came out and it's now being read everywhere, you know. I think there are 2,500 books that are out there already that people have acquired of my book. And I'm happy.

At first I didn't like it, but then I thought to myself, oh my God. If all these young people in this country who don't know anything really about that time and about the Holocaust, maybe we'll educate them. If it just educates a few of them, I want that book out there and I'm going to try to give out, print up as many books as I can and give them to people. And as I said, right now I think there are about 2,500 books that have been acquired by people in this country.

And I hope that people are reading this book and maybe a few of them will learn what it is all about, how the Third Reich started. And there is a similarity in what's happening here now. It's in a different way, it's different, but yet there's a great similarity. It's hard to imagine, isn't it?

In America, of all places, it's hard to imagine. I know. I know. May I ask a favor here? I would like to hear, as you've shared these things, I would like to hear Dana, ask Dana a quick question. Is she still there? Yes, she's here.

Yep, I'm here. Dana, as you listen to this remarkable story with your father, what are your thoughts on this extraordinary story of his? Well, it's interesting. So his life, when you start to read the book and there's so many interesting things that happened to his life and he told you about a couple of them. I kind of feel like his life has a purpose for sure.

We all have a purpose in life, but I feel like at this point it's taken 92 years to have a real purpose. And he is very strong. He's lived it, as you heard the story. He lived these hard, awful times.

Lose your entire family except his brother and trying to survive and gets a second chance at life. And is my dad is a very positive, upbeat person. And it's even hard to imagine that like having still being that way, like after living through such tragedy. But I think that he came here, he created something, he got it, you know, had a family, created a business and all of that. But like at this point in his life, I really feel like he has a lot of, he's a wealth of knowledge, a wealth of he's lived it. And I never get tired of hearing him say these stories. I actually get emotional about it, really, because I mean, it's really my family, too.

And I've heard it so many times in my life, but literally every time it like sets a chord, you know, like that emotional, like I feel it coming up. But I feel like at this point, I'm very thankful that he can tell his story, that maybe his story will make a difference to somebody else in their life. To like, there's so many people that are like non-believers, right?

This didn't happen or what do you mean? Or like, I just don't get it. Like, I don't understand the same thing with like schools and universities and the denials.

And I don't understand young people today, you know, how they feel the way that they do. But if his story, he's had 20 some, like 27 interviews, done a lot of interviews. And a matter of fact, if you're interested on our company's website, which is dii-ins.com, you can go onto the website and go to the page at the top says media and all his interviews are there. Because what we do, and we post all the interviews there, because he is the founder of our company, started our company.

I actually work in the business today. But we wanted like, we want his story there. We want people to hear the interviews. And his message, like he's done a lot of interviews to try to deliver the message to at this point, even in 92 years in his life to make a difference because he lived it. You know, Jack, I'm kind of thinking you might want to do another book called My Three Lives because you're in Act Three right now. It's so funny you say that because I always say that to my dad is that dad is your third life.

Like literally, it's his third life. Yeah. I'm going to let you go. I'd like to maybe even follow up and do some more with this. But before I close out on this time, and I appreciate very much your taking the time, both of you. What are your final thoughts that you would like to say to the people of this country? As we're in a very difficult election season, the country is at loggerheads with itself. We've got wars brewing in Eastern Europe. We've got wars in the Middle East. We've got a mess on our hands at our southern border.

We've got all kinds of things going on. What would you say to the American people if you could say it to as many people as you could? Well, ask God for peace. Because that's the one thing that really every person wants except those of you who cause all these problems and become the leaders of these problem times and organizations. You know, ask God to help us pray for it and do something about it yourself. You've got to do something yourself in order to get the help. And like I'm trying to do something by writing this book, My Two Lives, and using it now in order to educate people in this country, at least a few of them.

That's about the best that I could do at this point. But everybody, everybody should really think about it. In particular, the schools. I just don't understand why the schools don't teach this more. I mean, people between the ages of 8 and 18, I read somewhere, there are only about 30% of those people who know that there was such a thing as a Holocaust or such a thing as a Hitler war, you know, during the Second World War. It's astonishing to believe that some people don't even think it happened. I know. That's what's incredible to even wrap your mind around.

But, you know, it's amazing what people will believe. Do something, pray for peace, and do something. I think those are good words, Jack, and I want you to know how much I appreciate your time here today. I really do. Well, Peter, I appreciate you having me with you here. It means a lot to me.

It really does. I'm very proud of being on your show here. I'm going to sign off, and I want to thank you again, both of you, for being here with me. This is Peter Rosenberger, PeterRosenberger.com, and I'm going to close out with a song from Gracie.

It's a song I wrote, and she does a marvelous job with it, called Covenant Lament, that I felt like captured the heart of what we're saying. I love what Jack said. Pray for peace, and do something. Pray for peace, and do something. Good words. O Lord, my strength, my hope, on You I cast my care. In my distress I know You. Hear my prayer on You alone.

I wait. I rest upon Your Word. I am redeemed and free because of You.

I count my face. Incline thine ear unto me. Let my cry be heard by Thee alone and comfort me. O Lord, my strength, my hope, on You I cast my care. In my distress I know You. Hear my prayer on You alone.

I wait. I rest upon Your Word. I am redeemed and free because of You. To You I turn.

Only You will I trust. Lord, I lift my heart to Thee. For You my God has set me free. O Lord, my strength, my hope, on You I cast my care. In my distress I know You. Hear my prayer on You alone.

I wait. I rest upon Your Word. I am redeemed and free because of You. I am redeemed and free because of You.

Because of You. There's a correctional facility in Arizona that helps us recycle prosthetic limbs, and this facility is run by a group out of Nashville called CoreCivic. We met them over 11 years ago, and they stepped in to help us with this recycling program of taking prostheses and you disassemble them. You take the knee, the foot, the pylon, the tube clamps, the adapters, the screws, the liners, the prosthetic socks, all these things we can reuse, and inmates help us do it. Before CoreCivic came along, I was sitting on the floor at our house or out in the garage when we lived in Nashville, and I had tools everywhere, limbs everywhere, and feet, boxes of them and so forth.

I was doing all this myself, and I'd make the kids help me, and it got to be too much for me. And so I was very grateful that CoreCivic stepped up and said, Look, we are always looking for faith-based programs that are interesting and that give inmates a sense of satisfaction, and we'd love to be a part of this. And that's what they're doing. And you can see more about that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. So please help us get the word out that we do recycle prosthetic limbs. We do arms as well, but the majority of amputations are lower limb.

And that's where the focus of Standing With Hope is. That's where Gracie's life is with her lower limb prosthesis. And she's used some of her own limbs in this outreach that she's recycled. I mean, she's been an amputee for over 30 years.

So you go through a lot of legs and parts and other types of materials, and you can reuse prosthetic socks and liners if they're in good shape. All of this helps give the gift that keeps on walking. And it goes to this prison in Arizona where it's such an extraordinary ministry.

Think with that. Inmates volunteering for this. They want to do it.

And they've had amazing times with it. And I've had very moving conversations with inmates that work in this program. And you can see, again, all of that at standingwithhope.com slash recycle. They're putting together a big shipment right now for us to ship over. We do this pretty regularly throughout the year as inventory rises, and they need it badly in Ghana. So please go out to standingwithhope.com slash recycle and get the word out and help us do more. If you want to offset some of the shipping, you can always go to the giving page and be a part of what we're doing there.

We're purchasing material in Ghana that they have to use that can't be recycled. We're shipping over stuff that can be. And we're doing all of this to lift others up and to point them to Christ. And that's the whole purpose of everything that we do. And that is why Gracie and I continue to be standing with Hope. standingwithhope.com