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Holocaust survivor recalls Nazi terrors
By THOMAS MICHALSKI
Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008 |
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![[Image]](/content_images/090308_lle-03.jpg) |
| Photo by THOMAS MICHALSKI |
| Lisl Schick holds photo enlargement of herself and brother, Paul, as children. It was taken just before “The Night of Broken Glass” in Austria. |
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LARGO – Nearly 11 million Jews, Gypsies, Austrians, Poles, Greeks, Germans, homosexuals, mentally and physically disabled people and others were murdered during Adolph Hitler’s reign of terror from 1939 to 1945.
People were shot down in the streets of their home towns. Others died on the way to concentration camps, packed into wooden box cars for days and weeks at a time.
Still others perished in the gas chambers of Belzez, Chelmno, Majdanek and the most infamous of all, Auschwitz.
Some became the victims of so-called “medical experiments” at places like Sachsenhausen, Dachau, Natzweller and Ravensbrueck, where death often was slow and painful.
The Holocaust is known as “Hell on Earth.” More than 5.7 million Jews alone from Austria, Belgium, Czechoslovakia, Italy, Poland, Romania and other countries were slain by German SS troops who thrived on the killing and torture of innocent men, women and children.
“The nightmares are now gone, but I will never forget those dark days,” Lisl Schick said. “I lost most of my family to the Nazis . . . my grandparents, aunts, uncles.”
Schick, now 80, was one of the fortunate ones who escaped torture and ovens in concentration camps. The medical experiments. The rape and incest of young children by Nazi soldiers who marched through Europe’s small towns and big cities.
Schick of Largo is one of about 100 Pinellas County survivors of the Holocaust. Some still carry the scars of the past. A few even bear tattooed serial numbers on their arms from the death camps.
Schick and her younger brother, Walter, lived a middle class life in Vienna. Her father, Paul, was a bank accountant and her mother, Charlotte, was a housewife. As a young child of about 10 she lived through the “Night of the Broken Glass” or Kristallnacht, the first Nazi insurrection of Vienna in which SS troops maimed and murdered Jews and destroyed their homes and businesses.
“My childhood before the war was pleasant,” Schick recalls. “My parents were aware
of the anti-Semitism. Then in March of 1938 Hitler’s troops marched into Vienna.”
Schick and her brother attended Boerse Schule, an elementary school, and had friends of all nationalities.
“The Nazis had undercover agents in Austria all along,” Schick said. “The change happened overnight.”
Anything Jewish was destroyed. Homes. Stores. Places of worship. Nazi flags were raised. Jews were rounded up. Families were ripped apart. Suddenly prejudice and hate ruled.
“I went to school one morning and none of the other children wanted to bother with us,” Schick said. “They called us ‘dirty Jews’ and said their parents warned them not to speak to us or they would get into trouble.”
The Holocaust, or Shoah as the Jews call it, began. It would continue throughout World War II.
The Night of Broken Glass in Vienna occurred on November 11, 1938. Hundreds of synagogues were destroyed. More than 7,000 Jewish businesses were ruined and 30,000 people were arrested. Signs went up banning Jews from pools, parks and other public places.
“My mother used to pick me up from school and we would go to a park,” Schick said. “One day we were greeted by a sign that read, ‘No Dogs, No Jews Allowed.’”
Schick’s grandfather was a World War I Austrian Army highly decorated hero. It meant nothing as Nazi SS troops marched through neighborhoods. People were rounded up and spat upon, beaten, murdered.
World War II started on Sept. 1, 1939. Eventually Jewish citizens would be packed into wooden box- cars and sent away to concentration camps, never to be heard from again. German “liquidation squads” invaded all parts of Europe. Their mission was to kill everyone they believed to be inferior.
Those who survived . . . the blonde, blue-eyed ones were considered perfect . . . supported Hitler. Europe, like America at the time, was in a deep depression. Money was worthless. Unemployment was high. People in European countries believed that Hitler could help them.
At the beginning of the Holocaust, people could buy their way to other countries. Schick’s parents heard about the so-called “Kinder Transport,” a train that carried children under 17 from Austria to the safety of England. Schick’s parents turned over all of their possessions to the Nazis in exchange for the safety of their children
Schick, her brother and father went to England. Her mother later escaped the Nazis and fled to New York. In 1945 the family reunited and started life anew.
Schick eventually married. Her husband, Alfred, a U.S. Army veteran, eventually became the first certified radiologist at Morton Plant Hospital in Clearwater. He died of blood disease. Her brother, now also dead, was vice president of news for ABC-TV in New York and worked with the likes of Peter Jennings and Howard K. Smith.
Schick has four children. Kenneth and Robert reside in Atlanta while Nancy and Kathryn live locally.
“They understand what I went through as a child and have been very supportive,” Schick said. “I’m a survivor. My glass is always half full. I’ve always believed that when you have lemons you made lemonade.”
There is a Jewish saying about the Holocaust: Never again. It means that people should never allow a dictatorship to crush a race of people for whatever reasons. Schick herself is very involved with the Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg that bears witness to the tragedies of that time in history many would like to forget.
But the survivors and the families and friends of survivors will not allow the Holocaust to be forgotten.
“We cannot allow it to ever happen again,” Schick said. “We must continue to teach diversity to end prejudice and hatred.”
The most powerful memorial to the victims of genocide is the museum’s centerpiece, Boxcar No. 1130695-5. It once carried people to concentration camps. It came from Poland to Florida in September 1997 and is displayed at the museum as a reminder of those terrible times.
“People, especially children, are shocked when they learn about the Holocaust,” Schick said. “We hope that a Holocaust never happens again, but it could if we let it, and we must not.”
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Article published on Wednesday, Sept. 3, 2008
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