Concentration camp survivor visits MU to help students learn about the Holocaust
by Kathleen Sprouse, posted April 30, 2008
Holocaust survivor Erika Mandler told her story of living through the atrocities of concentration camp to an audience of more than 130 MU students in Waters Auditorium on April 23.
Mandler’s story was the first event of Holocaust Memorial Week and Genocide Memorial Week.
Mandler, 85 and now a resident of Chillicothe, Mo., is focused on sharing her story about the Holocaust as her generation fades off.
“To remember them and honor them,” Mandler said. “To forget would be our greatest sin.”
Mandler survived the Nazi concentration camp in Slovakia and found true love when the country was crumbling.
Erika (Raab) Mandler was born in 1922 in Vienna, the capital of Austria. She had a normal childhood, grew up with close girlfriends, enjoyed ice-skating and hiking and had an older brother. Her life changed one Friday night, March 11, 1938, when her father and brother turned the radio on to the voice of the Austrian president. The Germans were marching into Austria and their president did not want his people to shed blood.
“This is going to be the beginning of the end,” Mandler recalls her mom saying. “She was right, it was.”
Jewish people were no longer allowed in public schools, public buildings or public parks and were required to wear a yellow star on the front and back of their outfits at all times. Mandler’s close girlfriends were no longer allowed to play with her, or associate with her, simply because she was Jewish. Mandler remembers everyone trying to leave the country.
Mandler and her brother traveled to the border desperately trying to escape into Czechoslovakia to reunite with their parents — they had been living with their grandma. After living in the small Jewish town, Mandler soon fell in love with a dentist. Her father was not excited because he was 14 years her senior. Mandler’s father did give his blessing, though, and they married shortly in the hopes that they could board one of the last ships leaving for Palestine. Unfortunately, the British, which ruled Palestine at that time, closed the harbors when they were trying to leave Czechoslovakia, allowing no more immigrants. Not only were Mandler and her husband no longer able to go, but they no longer had any money after buying the tickets.
Six months later, after trying to survive in a small town where Jews were no longer allowed to work as professionals, dentists, doctors or lawyers, things only got worse. Mandler’s husband received a letter from the government that he was being resettled to Auschwitz. He was ordered to pull the teeth out of the corpses. Eventually, he was killed.
“I kissed my husband goodbye,” Mandler said. “That was the last time I saw him.”
In 1941, Mandler was relocated to Novak, an old army camp that had wooden barracks, no bathrooms or showers, just a latrine, and about 1,500 prisoners. Mandler’s brother, who was a medical student before the war, found work at the infirmary helping three doctors. Mandler then met her second love, Dr. George Mandler. Mandler and her family spent almost two and a half years in Novak before her family was saved from the cattle cars taking them to Auschwitz.
“I love her,” Dr. Mandler said to the commander. “She loves me, and I can’t let her go […] if she goes I will go too.”
George Mandler saved Erika’s family, then sent her parents to a nearby town where a family hid them for six months. Mandler and her husband then began their five-month hike through the mountains to reach the liberated part of Czechoslovakia. Erika struggled to make the hike, because she was pregnant.
Once they made it to Czechoslovakia, Mandler gave birth to a baby girl who died two days later. After the war was over, they were married and moved to Prague where George Mandler found work. His brother in New York sent documents for the couple, and soon they moved to the United States.
“The most admirable thing about Erika was her strength,” said Carrie Casper, a sophomore graphic design major. “Not just physically, but mentally and emotionally.”
Mandler remembers her husband and her family by sharing her story and her struggle.
This week the Jewish Student Organization (JSO) is hosting Holocaust Remembrance Week and Genocide Awareness Week. They are having a clothing drive, called the “Graveyard Memorial Drive, at Speaker’s Circle on the MU campus. The clothes will be donated to local charities.
“It symbolizes how the clothing was stripped from the victims during the Holocaust,” said Shira Berkowitz, president of JSO. “And thrown in piles upon piles of their possessions.”
JSO and Hillel, the Foundation for Jewish Campus Life, all serve the University of Missouri, Stephens College, Columbia College and other mid-Missouri institutions of higher education. The two organizations offer students a place on campus to learn more about Judaism and explore their beliefs. Hillels exist on all major campuses in America, serving Jewish students.
“I got involved [with the Hillel] in the first weeks of school,” said Rachel Rubin, a freshman in charge of this week’s events. “I knew that even amongst all the new people and things going on here, being with other Jewish people always makes me feel like home.”
This Friday, May 2, there will be a special Shabbat with the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, Queer, (LGBTQ) community. Sunday, May 4, there will be a candlelight vigil at Tiger Plaza to remember those who perished because of hate.
“We are the last generation to be able to learn from the people who lived through the holocaust,” Rubin said. “Which then gives us the responsibility to teach the world about the holocaust. […]We have to carry on the message of what hate can accomplish.”
For more information or an event calendar visit MU’s Hillel and the JSO Web-site.
