This is a profile story celebrating the optimism of a Holocaust survivor. Orphaned at the age of 14, Marks tells students the story from his point of view as they recover from the grim facts of 911.

 

Al Marks, Holocaust survivor. Here's a portion of the article I wrote 9.2001. Texas City Sun.

 

 

Holocaust survivor tells his story By Reagan OHare 

 

TEXAS CITY - With details and honest survivor of the Holocaust laid out the story of Nazi Germany's terror to Texas City High School students.

 

For nearly two hours nearly 200 students heard account of Al Marks and his survival in four World War II concentration camps.

 

“I feel if only 10 percent of you will remember, we're going to live in a better world, he said, “If you can share with your children, we are living in a part of history we should never forget, “Marks said, “in another 10 to 15 there won't be any survivors, only tapes and memories of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews were systematically exterminated.”

 

“To meet someone who survived four concentration camps is a mind-boggling,” said Linda an English teacher at Texas City High, “He not only survived, but also became a successful man in his own right.”

 

Marks, who was in the camps when he was 13, laid out a general history of the Holocaust starting with the basics.

 

“In the 30's there was a man named Adolph Hitler,” he began, “unless you were of pure white race, you were sub-human.”

 

He said “People say the Holocaust was strictly against one religion. Nothing can be farther from the truth.  Jehovah witnesses were the first and handicapped people were second.”

 

“Children with mental deficiencies were some of the first to be executed.”

 

“I am sure everyone has someone dear to you with a handicap and they were the people who were first executed and killed by Adolph.”

 

He pointed to the students. “If Hitler would have won, you wouldn’t have been here. (Those with the names) Garcia, Gonzales, Lupe, would not exist. Those are harsh words, but they are true.”

 

Marks spent a year in concentration camps. He was sent to Auschwitz, Mauthhausen, Melk and was finally liberated after a short time in Ebensee.

 

In 1944, Marks became separated from his parents.

 

Waiting to board a Nazi freight, a man split up the Jews and others to groups on the right and to the left.

 

Marks remembers vividly the freight train, the doors, the reflections and the heavy lights and the medical doctor waiting.

 

“He pointed to the right and to the right was the gas chamber and those that went were left alone for a while but would not survive too long in labor camps,” he said.

 

His parents went right. He went left. Even at age 13, Marks there was no time for emotion at the concentration camps.

 

“You really didn't know what was happening to he thought you were being put into a detention camp. There was indication of what was going to happen.”

 

In Melk, Marks worked with other prisoners to build escape tunnels. He described the conditions as sub-human with hardly any food and no means of escape.

 

“There was no way to fight back because we had no weapons, “he said. “We were surrounded by people with machine guns.”

 

Escapees from the camps were captured, tortured or executed.

 

“They were put against a barbed wire fence that was electrified. They stood there with no shoes until they dropped. Others were beaten to death and others hanged in front of their fellow prisoners.

 

“That’s something you never forget.”

 

Marks said fighting to survive was a way of life.

 

“You just did things just to stay alive, he said, “You slept for a few hours, and if someone was missing, we'd be out all night in the snow. (we were)- a walking skeleton that didn't think; we'd just did anything to survive.”

 

to On July 8, 1944, Allied forces bombed the camp mistaking it for a military barricade.

 

“In less than one minute we lost 500 people, “Marks, said who has a small piece of one of the bomb in his chest.

 

 On May 5, 1945, Marks and his fellow prisoners at Ebensee were liberated.

 

“That feeling cannot be described. It is as if you were sentenced to die and you are already there and tied down and then the phone rings and your life is spared another for another 30 days.

 

“There is no way you would feel it unless you went through it.”

 

Just moments before, Nazi camp officers tried to force the remaining 18,000 prisoners into tunnels as a means of quick execution.

 

They refused to go.

 

That is one reason, he said, there are Holocaust survivors today.

 

Fifty years after his Marks found one of the soldiers who liberated Ebensee.

 

“I remember I met him in a hotel lobby. You must imagine meeting the man who saved your life.”

 

After the war in Europe Marks went home to Budapest to search for friends and family. He did find not find them.

 

He was declared a war orphan and given a $60 month to live on.

 

A social worker chose his future home.

 

Marks remembers she told him, “You can go to Boston, Denver or Houston.”

 

He didn't know what to do so he let the woman pick his destination.

 

On Jan 5, 1948, Marks arrived at Hobby Airport. He left 22 inches of snow and came here in shorts.

 

Marks spent two years in the U.S. Army and served in the Korean War before he was an American citizen.

 

Later in life, Marks returned to the concentration camps, including to tunnel where he was sent to be exterminated.

 

He took a picture from the outside looking in. It was total darkness.

 

Then he took a picture looking out.

 

“It was sunlight. It was life,” he said.

 

“As in the midst of the war and facing death, there was no choice, as a human being, you have that determination - like when you go  through an operation, even in recovery, you have a desire to live.

 

“You try to focus your mind on something to live for.

 

 “You always have to have a little hope even in the darkest moment.. You’ve got to find the little sunshine in the rain.

 

“For every minus there is a plus. You can take a handicap and turn it into an asset and something can come good out of it.

 

Like the final moments when the Titanic waited for help, the Holocaust was a time when people did not respond. The whole world stood by,” he said. “We didn't do anything about it.”

 

Marks added that he sees similarities between the Holocaust and Tuesday's series of terrorist attacks (911).

 

“Like those who blame everything on the Americans, Hitler blamed everything on the Jews.”

 

“It should never happen again. We should never stand by and let crazy people do what they are doing.

 

Houston is just as big of a target as any other place.

 

“It's important to Marks there is a ray of hope. Where there is life, there is hope. We were told no one will leave alive and that there will always be enough time to do away with everyone.

 

“It's like the people buried with cell phones with the ray of hope that someone will find us.”

 

Reagan O’Hare is a Texas City Sun reporter.

“Holocaust Survivor” Wednesday Sept 19, 2001, Texas City Sun