.
They were ordinary people. They were killed because who they are.
Not for anything that's said, but because they were Jews, because they were Gypsies, because they were homosexuals.
And that's what we have to have. We've got to have respect for other people.
I was asked by a group of women, how come that you are even here?
You were not supposed to be here. You were all supposed to be gone.
The Nazis murdered close to 7 million Jews, not 6 million, close to 7.
20 million Russians. 3 million Russian POWs they murdered.
1,900 priests in Europe were murdered. The Catholics were murdered too.
Quite a few Catholics, a few million. They can't deny it.
There are people who went to Auschwitz and Wolfberg and all the other concentration camps.
There are those who were hidden children.
There are those who were in the Kindertransport.
So we've got a whole variety of people.
If you haven't lived through it, even reading about it doesn't get across what really happened.
I try to stress to the children that it's not only about the 6 million Jews.
It is about respect. It is about the world.
It is about learning and trying to be a better person.
It's important. It's respect for others.
Respect. It's the answer.
It's common decency. It's respect.
Respect is the answer.
On April the 12th, 1945, when we went into Nordhausen, it was something that we were never prepared for.
Very often, especially if I talk into grown-ups, I have a very bad nightmare before and after.
But even during the war, before we went over it, we didn't hear about concentration camps.
In Auschwitz, the Nazis murdered between 12,000 and 20,000 a day.
Between 12,000 and 20,000 people every day.
We had to go through that beautiful little town and then see the railroad tracks, the barbed wire,
and those emaciated skeletons hanging on there.
I joined an organization called DIN.
It means judgment. It's a Hebrew word for judgment.
A little over a year ago, I was at Siegid Elementary School.
Usually the youngsters have questions.
There were 50 boys and girls and 300 Jewish-Soviet high-ranking officers helped us.
They joined us and we were hunting for high-ranking Nazis.
And a 10-year-old girl asked me if I remember what was the last words,
what my parents told me when Gestapo picked them up.
Because they were taken one year before my brother, me, and the whole family met with him.
We just couldn't believe it.
Some guys wept, others many of them vomited.
And we were told by the medics not to give them food because we'd kill them.
I had to sit down and cry.
Because nobody ever asked me in that moment.
And we were successful with some men we couldn't find.
We were looking for the local bots. We couldn't find them.
We were looking for Mr. Klimates from Lithuania. We couldn't find them.
He was the head of the Nazis in Lithuania.
They murdered all the Jews in Lithuania.
They didn't wait for the Nazis to come in.
It's emotional.
You know, at this time of my life, there are other things that I can get emotional about.
But, like, it's the past.
I just could not believe that we had, humanity had sunk to that level of evil.
It was so horrendous.
Half of the people were dead when they came to the extermination camp.
They dragged that boxcar with 120 people standing around for a few days and a few nights.
They closed the doors, they closed the little windows. There was no air, no sanitary facilities.
Can you imagine?
There was demeaning, ostracizing, you name it.
Do the most that you can to make these people feel like they're worms of the earth.
Respecting others, it's everything. It's important. It's respect for others.
It's common decency. It's respect.
Respect. It's the answer.
And we were not told to do this, but we did it.
And I understand that every other American unit that liberated a concentration camp
brought the townspeople in from this beautiful little town
and had them dig the pits and then carry the bodies and bury them.
The Holocaust is not a one-time thing. History shows that.
And unfortunately, every day here in our world, same thing.
Look at history. It will repeat itself if you don't learn from it.
And that's what the Holocaust is, the teaching tool to learn from, what not to do.
And the thing that bothered me more than anything else that they said most of the time,
they didn't know what was going on.
None of us knew, which they could have smelled it miles around.
Some of the kids say, can I touch you? Can I touch you?
Because we don't believe it. No, we read it.
It's a history like everything else, but you are really, you were there.
It's true. So they go and touch and hug, and that is really very, very nice.
I want people to know what happened.
I tell them the truth. No propaganda.
Even historians will argue about what really happened.
Numbers is the worst that can happen to people.
Because if you give people numbers, you take away their identity.
They are not a person anymore. They are just a number.
It will be sterilized.
Each day, one or two people who do realize who we are and why is it important.
We are going to schools and teaching children about the inequality, the hatred,
the permeate societies, and we want to be aware of it and do everything we can,
possibly stop it.
If we don't care about each other, if we don't help,
or we are just opposite, like helping the fighter to go,
instead of trying to stop it.
The older I get, the more difficult it gets to get the message over,
because we are the last generation, and once we are gone,
nobody is there who has been a witness to what happened.
I am the witness. It happened to me and to my family,
and I can only speak for what it is.
If you are not willing to accept it as a true, I cannot change it.
Do you have hope for the future?
Oh, yes. Oh, yes, I have hope. I never lost my hope.
You can't imagine how life was in Auschwitz, working under the machine gun.
You have always two choices.
Either hang yourself on the frustrate, or go on, and then you go on.
You have to go on with everything.
Hatred starts very innocently, often, with telling ethnic jokes.
We impress it on the students.
I always tell the children, you cannot change the world,
but you can do one little thing, even if it's on the playground,
that you help somebody who's been bullied.
It's common decency. It's respect.
It's important. It's respect for others.
It's important. It's respect for others.
Respecting others is everything.
Respect. It's the answer.
We exist and people should come.
And yes, we know it's not a pleasant, entertaining few hours,
but it's necessary to know what happened.
One student wrote me a note.
It was a boy who said he'd been searching all his life for a hero.
And he says, I found it. It's you.
Even in our small museum, I hope we can influence enough people.
If it's just a small minority to listen and learn, we've accomplished something.
I believe in people. People are good.
The country is the best because the people are the best here.
And when the pouring out of gratitude and enthusiasm
when Jack Norton's boxcar came here, I'll never forget that day,
all the people everywhere, and it was a great tribute,
not only to our museum, and Jack was one of the most wonderful guys in the world,
but it was this community rose up and supported and it meant something.
And that's the thing we've got to do.
We want this to mean something.
It means something to school children.
People make them realize what we can do, what we must do
to stop this bigotry and hatred in the world.
If you respect people, you can't do bad things.
Respect is the cornerstone of life.
Thank you.
