“We are brought here today to learn the truth about the Holocaust,” said Neil Eichelbaum – Miami Lakes Educational Center’s retired American History teacher – on stage at the MLEC auditorium, in front of 300 students on November 5th, 2013.
Mr. Julius Einsentein, 94 years old, is a survivor from the Dachau concentration camp and was invited as a guest speaker to a student assembly arranged by Mr. Eichelbaum. The assembly consisted of Einsentein’s accounts of the Holocaust along with pictures he had acquired throughout and after the ordeal.
Upon hearing that the Nazi’s were invading his homeland, Poland, Julius tried running away with his male relatives, leaving the women and children behind. Upon reaching Warsaw however, the Nazi army caught up with them at a cemetery where they had been hiding.
In 1943, Einsentein was taken to Dachau concentration camp, where an estimated 35,000 Jews died. He was a teenager at the time he was captured and separated from his mother and older sisters.
However, he was not alone. His older brother, who worked for the Nazis as a painter, managed to get him out of the concentration camp. Since he wasn’t an actual painter, he had to hide every night when the Nazis would count the workers.
Even with his brother’s aid, Julius ended up back in a concentration camp. Upon entering the new camp, the pungent smell of burning flesh greeted him. He was in Auschwitz Since he had already been tattooed and marked in his last camp; he wasn’t evaluated as weak and sorted into the gas chambers.
Despite malnutrition, Julius was expected to be respectful to his superiors. One time, as he was returning from work, he saluted a German officer. Although he acted as expected, he was punished by the officer with a punch that knocked out two of his teeth. Later on, when he saw another officer he assumed he wasn’t supposed to salute and continued walking. The officer called him back and punished him with a slap that knocked out the rest of his teeth. “That’s why I have no teeth,” said Einsentein.
In 1950, Einsentein moved to New York after leaving Germany with his family.
But this was more than just a history or a humanities lesson to the students, the assembly was meant “to preserve history” as Eichelbaum put it.
“This isn’t ancient history and it’s affected an entire generation before us,” said Eichelbaum “It had to be done.”
“My message to you is that you cannot be bystanders if you see something happening to someone else,” said Einsentein in his closing remarks, “Speak up.”
