Ask the Theologian | Stories from the Holocaust

Our Ask the Theologian guest on May 10 and May 17 was Mr. Ira Wise. Ira shared the powerful story of his parents survival of the Holocaust.To listen to the broadcast-Part 1[s3bubbleAudioSingle bucket=“AskTheTheologian” track=“Radio+Version%2F051014+Ira+Wise+Part+1.mp3”]Part 2[s3bubbleAudioSingle bucket=“AskTheTheologian” track=“Radio+Version%2F051714+Ira+Wise+part+2.mp3”]More from Ira Wise–Dad, (on the right) also survived the Holocaust by hiding in the open. In 1939, his family paid a $10,000 USD bribe to buy him official documents giving him a Catholic identity (~$170K today). Rounded up by the Nazis, he was put into a slave labor camp with other Slavic men. The Germans used delousing procedures to expose Jewish men. While shaving his head just before he had to strip down naked, Dad told them he was a barber and could help cut hair. They pulled him out of line and immediately put him to work, he avoided the physical inspection that would have identified him as a Jewish male. Dad didn’t like the hard physical labor of that camp so told the Nazis he was a machinist and was put to work making parts for Krupp (armaments). He’d secretly switch finished parts with experienced machinists until he learned how to do the work. Having fallen in love with a Jewish woman who was also hiding in the open, he forged a transfer to be in the same city with her. Several months later the Nazis figured out the unauthorized transfer and for punishment sent him to the front lines, where laborers had almost a 100% mortality rate.During Operation Market Garden in Nijmegen, Dad was sent to repair a bridge the armies were battling across. The Russian on one side of him was shot down dead, the Pole on the other side was also shot dead, so Dad thought he should lay down for a while, too. At dark he crawled into a safer hiding place and hid there for three days until his position was overrun by the British. With a working command of five languages, the Allies put him to work as a translator for the 172nd Combat Engineer Battalion of the Ninth Army. Because of his work with the Army, Dad and his new bride were allowed on the first boat of Jewish refugees allowed to enter the US after the war, the SS Marine Flasher. I thank G-d they eventually made it to Texas.Dad’s entire family, parents, brother and sister were murdered by the Nazis. He was the sole survivor of his family.

Mom survived the Holocaust by hiding in the open. On a train bound for the Treblinka death camp, the train was split in half because there was no capacity for new victims. Mom and her sister escaped from the stalled half of the train. After being hidden for a year by the Koza’s, a heroic Polish farm family, it became too dangerous to hide the two Jewish teens and they had to leave. Mom put on a cross, pretended to be Catholic and made her way to Germany where she spent the duration of the war as a slave laborer. Here is a picture of her ‘work book for foreigner’. Impossible to imagine how frightened was this teenager when the Nazis took her picture for this document.Special Offer - Hear the beautiful testimony of Holocaust survivor Helen Colin.[wpsc_products product_id=‘4900’]