Holocaust survivor speaks

 
Max Eisen remembers everyday he spent in the Auschwitz camp.

The 81-year-old-man from Hungary said he is thankful for every day he has lived since being at that camp. He spent a year at the interment camp during the Holocaust and said he is the only survivor of an extended family of 65 people.

"I remember every single day," Eisen said. "How does one survive this? I cannot tell you how…but here I am."

Eisen immigrated to Canada in 1949 and lives in Toronto. He flew into Thunder Bay and spoke at Lakehead University Thursday about his experiences when he and his family were forced from their home in 1944.

Eisen was 15 years old when he was sent to Auschwitz during the final year of Second World War. While in the camp his father, uncle and himself were forced into slave labour. Those who could not work were told their lives were of no value and were then marched into gas chambers.

Two months later Eisen’s father and uncle were selected for medical experiments. In the span of three months the Nazi’s killed 450,000 Hungarian Jews, and among those killed were his brothers and sister.

"We need to remember the past so we don’t repeat the same mistakes," he said. "We need to be aware of any ideology that is excluding other people like what the Nazi’s did to the Jews."

In 1994, Rwanda saw the mass killing of hundreds of thousands Tutsis. While the number of people killed during the Holocaust is greater than the fatalities witnessed in Rwanda, Eisen said it is cold to compare genocides since every number represents a person with a name and life.
Eisen said anything can happen when good people do nothing.
"It seems to me we have a difficulty learning form the past," he said. "It happened in Rwanda and Cambodia. Those were genocide."

Despite advocating the message for people not to repeat history’s mistakes, Eisen said he is still concerned that hatred toward Jews is as present today as it was in 1944.

"I feel as a Jew today, that anti-Semitism is out of the closet again," he said.

Walter Epp, professor of history education with Lakehead University, said he has invited Eisen to speak to his class for seven years.

"It is always the highlight of the semester," Epp said. "His presentation is so powerful and what he is taking about is so important that it really makes an impression on the students."

Epp said it is a chance for the students to interact with Eisen and get a sense of the issues surrounding surviving the Holocaust.