Holocaust survivor living in Kentucky shares his experience

LEXINGTON, Ky. (LEX 18) — Because the world prepares to mark Holocaust Remembrance Day, the College of Kentucky is internet hosting occasions all week lengthy to assist college students and the neighborhood study extra about that darkish interval of world historical past. Monday night, a Holocaust survivor shared his expertise on campus.

John Rosenberg was seven years outdated when Nazi troopers first banged on the door of his residence.

“My mom mentioned, ‘Are you going to kill us?’ and he mentioned he did not know,” Rosenberg advised listeners in a classroom contained in the White Corridor Classroom Constructing.

Rosenberg grew up in a Jewish household in Germany as Hitler and the Nazis rose to energy within the late Thirties. He mentioned he had a cheerful childhood, oblivious to rising antisemitism, till these troopers confirmed up.

“Nighttime, banging on the door, and the Nazis confirmed up and roused us out of our condo and had us come down into the sq., into the courtyard,” Rosenberg mentioned. “Whereas we stood there, they went into the synagogue and so they introduced out the prayer books and the scrolls and made a giant bonfire.”

Rosenberg mentioned the Nazis detonated dynamite contained in the synagogue, however didn’t burn it down because it stood subsequent to a hospital.

The subsequent morning, Rosenberg mentioned the troopers took his father away. His father ended up within the Buchenwald focus camp, however fortunately was despatched residence after a few weeks. The household moved to a detention camp in Rotterdam, then, as quickly as they had been in a position to in early 1940, bought on a ship sure for america. Rosenberg now lives in Prestonsburg, Kentucky.

The occasion was hosted by UK’s Jewish Pupil Middle. Rabbi Shlomo Litvin says with high-profile antisemitic occasions on the rise, it is as essential as ever to listen to in regards to the Holocaust from somebody who was there.

“Once you see all this stuff, it isn’t laborious to grasp the bottom from which the Holocaust grew. So seeing the tip of that path, seeing what occurs if we do not change one thing, is extremely essential,” Litvin mentioned.

It is his hope that horrors just like the Holocaust stay up to now.