Remembering the Holocaust

Last week one of the faculty invited a man she had bumped into to speak to us at the Jerusalem Center. His name was Elias and was in over 9 concentration camps during the holocaust, including Auschwitz and Dacau (where we visited as a family ten years ago.) He was from Poland orginally and worked in concentration camps when he 19-21 years old, so he has a clear memory of everything that happened. Some of his stories were amazing. He even says that looking back he doesn't understand how he survived. He was forced to build the railroads that carried many of the Jews to concentration camps. Amazingly, he is one of the happiest people you'll ever meet, as you can tell from the picture. Notice the tattooed number on his arm still.
His whole family was killed in the holocaust. Since he was the only survivor he had no where to go after the war. He married a girl and they went to Guatemala where they raised their family. He doesn't speak English, so it was neat being able to speak with him in Spanish as well. One of his daughters married a Chileno who was there and I talked with him for a while as well. The next day we went to the holocaust museum and that was a sobering experience. My favorite part was the "Hall of Names" as pictured on the left. Elder and Sister Beckstead accompanied us on the trip. Sister Beckstead was my kindergarten teacher. Who would have known that 18 years later we would be in Jerusalem together!