Earlier this week, former president of the American Association of Jewish Holocaust Survivors of Greater Boston, and survivor of the Holocaust himself, Israel Arbeiter revisited the accounts of his life in front of the seniors and faculty of Malden High School. He spoke about tribulations he overcame as a slave under the Nazi regime in Auschwitz.
With his arrival, groups of seniors, greeted Arbeiter on stage. Some students introduced themselves, and all were thanking him for coming out of retirement of public speaking to come speak to them. One student in particular, senior Taylor Winter, who also took a field trip to the New England Holocaust Memorial in Boston where she first met Mr. Arbeiter, thanked him for coming to the school. Winter felt that it was “quite special for the students to listen to a Holocaust survivor tell their story for themselves”.
As the granddaughter of a Holocaust survivor, Antonetta Remedi-Brown expressed that “hearing another person’s ordeals [was]resonating”. She said that the “horrors” Arbeiter brought up in his story, “[were] the devastating reality of many Holocaust survivors, like [her] grandmother’s”. Realities like, divisions of families, starvation, and slave labor.
From Left to Right: Seniors Grace Lugo, Barbara Castro, and Shirley Maximin speaking to Arbeiter after the event. Photo submitted by Mayor Christenson.
Israel Arbeiter was born in a city called Plock in Poland. He was declared a slave at the age of 14 when the German army invaded the city of Plock in September 1939. Him and his family were then transported to a ghetto in central Poland c
alled Starachowice. The ghettos were used to give the German military an easy way to keep all Jews in one place so they could transport them once the German government figured out what to do with all of them. Arbeiter, and two of his brothers were then forced to work at an ammunition factory to work for the German military. Arbeiter also had to work for the Gestapo which was the Nazi police force. He was forced to do things such as shine the officer’s boots. This went on until 1942.
Israel Arbeiter went on to ask the audience to raise their hands if they have taken a Holocaust history course, which resulted with nobody raising their hands. He then went on to describe how he pictured the decision to exterminate the Jews was made by a bunch of drunken high ranking SS officers.
Arbeiter explained how in the beginning the Germans would drive the Jews around in buses and trucks in which they connected the exhaust to the inside of them so that they would die of carbon monoxide poisoning. But because this method was too slow, the Germans came up with three ways to exterminate the Jewish people fast. They would lower their food rations, make them work hard labor with minimal food, and also use the gas chambers.
On October 26, 1942, a special unit came into Arbeiters’ ghetto and rounded up the Jews for selection. Arbeiter and two of his brothers were placed on the left side while his mo
Senior Taylor Winters speaking with Arbeiter. Photo submitted by Mayor Christenson.
ther, father and younger brother were placed on the right. He tried running to their side so that he can be with them wherever they were going but his father told him to go back to the other side and to carry on the Jewish tradition. His mother, father and younger brother were later murdered that day. He expressed this day to be “The darkest day of his life and [it] will continue to be until [he] [dies]”.
After that, Arbeiter and his brothers worked at the ammunition factory. He described the treatment they got resembled to animals. There was however a doctor because there was an outbreak of typhus within the camp. If a prisoner got sick then the Germans would kill them because they didn’t want to take the time to heal them. The doctor would aid in the spread of the disease because he would not wash the thermometer he used to check the patients. Arbeiter was among one of the people infected and was put into quarantine. When the quarantine barack got too full, the Germans would kill the infected in the forest to make more room.
In his second night in the barack, a camp commander of whom which Arbeiter testified against after the war, came in and ordered the 87 people in the barack out. Arbeiter managed to sneak out but was still dead according to the Germans. This meant that he got no food ration. Arbeiter was helped hidden in one of the barracks in the camp by some of his friends. The risk of hiding somebody was that they would kill anyone doing so, plus 25 other people.When that barack was searched, they didn’t find him. Arbeiter was however brought back to a the quarantine barrack by a Jewish police officer in the camp that promised he would bring him food and help him hide if needed later. Also, a woman who worked in the kitchen who Arbeiter was friends with stole extra food for him as well. As a result, Arbeiter got stronger and healed from typhus.
Photo sent by Mayor Gary Christenson. Pictured on the left is Israel Arbeiter, and on the right is Mayor Gary Christenson.
After a while, Arbeiter was forced to leave the Starachowice slave labor camp he was at and went to a number of different camps. At one point he was put on a death march where the Germans took a number of Jews around to different places and tried to find a place to keep them. He was liberated in the middle of this death march in the black forest on his twentieth birthday.
Arbeiter explained that he did not know what to do after his liberation. He was taken care of by a German family after that. But he wondered where his family was. He expressed the confusion he felt for being liberated after being a slave for five and a half years during his teenage years. His life was halted at the age of fourteen. He explained that he had no guidance from anybody and was not able to grow up normally due to all of this.
Arbeiter told the story of how he later stole a high ranking Nazi’s motorcycle. He said that this motorcycle was his lifeline. With that motorcycle, he could find his family, and reconnect with the women who saved him from starvation. Who later became his wife, Chanka Arbeiter.
Lastly, Arbeiter pointed out a poster hung in the halls of Malden High School which displayed the a statement saying “Stop Bullying”. He used this to express how the student of Malden High should know the power of resilience, and the importance of standing up to bullying.
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