It wasn’t until he was in his 20s that Rob Berkowits learned his father was in one of the most famous photos of a concentration camp in the Second World War.
It was the 1990s, and Berkowits, who was already living on his own, stopped by his parents’ house for a visit. His dad, Alex, pulled out a Winnipeg Free Press article that featured a black and white image of a dozen emaciated men in wooden bunks.
It was taken April 16, 1945, a few days after the Buchenwald camp in central Germany was liberated.
“He asked me if I recognized this photograph, and I of course had seen it,” said Berkowits, now the executive director of the Rady Jewish Community Centre in Winnipeg.
The article was about author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel, who is shown in the photo in the second row of bunks, seventh from the left, next to a vertical beam. But that’s not who Alex Berkowits was focused on.
“He pointed over to the left in the photo [three men over from Wiesel] … and said, ‘that’s me,'” Berkowits said in an interview with CBC’s Information Radio on Monday, which marks Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, to honour those who survived and died.
“My jaw dropped. And then I remember him telling me about how the Red Cross — and these are his terms — rounded up the healthier-looking ones for this photograph.”
Many of the prisoners at Buchenwald were dead or near death from malnutrition as U.S. troops entered the camp.
Alex, who looks in the photo like a man in his late 40s or 50s, was just 14. Wiesel was 16.
Born in the Romanian city of Sighet, where Wiesel was a neighbour and family friend, Alex immigrated to Canada at age 17 after the liberation.
Weisel was sent to a rehabilitation centre in France with about 1,000 child survivors. He later moved to the United States and wrote books including Night, his memoir of his experiences in the camps.
Alex continued to tell his story until his death in March 2013.
And now Rob Berkowits has carried that on, developing a 45-minute presentation that he has given to schools, churches, synagogues and seniors’ organizations.
“It continues to be an honour and privilege to tell his story on his behalf,” he said of his dad.
Berkowits now carries a copy of the famous photograph in his wallet as “a reminder to me of the fact that any challenges that I have in a daily basis are pretty much negligible,” he said.
“It kind of gives you a perspective check, I think. It’s a reminder of him, but more importantly, a reminder of his survival and basically why I’m walking the Earth today.”
Alex and his family were rounded up by the Nazis in April 1944. During his time as a prisoner, he was in four different camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau, where more than 1.1 million men, women, and children were murdered.
The simple act of putting on pants may have saved his life.
Teenagers at the time typically wore short pants, while men wore long pants. As they arrived at Auschwitz-Birkenau, guards put people into different lines, most often sending women and children immediately to the gas chambers, Berkowits explained.
“For whatever reason, the night before, my dad puts on a pair of his brother’s pants. His brothers were older, in their 20s.”
Alex was lined up with the men deemed useful for work camps, while others were sent to their deaths.
To mark Yom HaShoah — which begins Monday evening and continues until Tuesday night — an event titled Unto Every Person There is a Name, will be held Tuesday at the Manitoba Legislative Building, with volunteers reading aloud the names of Holocaust victims.
“It gives names back to those who were stripped of their identities before they were robbed of their lives,” said Berkowits, who will be reading some of the names.
“By reciting the names, we remember that each victim was an individual — a mother, a father, a son or a daughter, a sister or brother, a child, a friend. And each of these individuals had hopes and dreams like all of us, and they clung to life with those hopes.”
About 150 people will take turns to read the names.
“Here we are, 81 years later after this dark chapter in human history, and it remains as relevant, or more so, than it ever has been,” Berkowits said.
