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Holocaust Remembrance
How My Friend Survived 3 Concentration Camps
With nearly all Holocaust survivors now gone, it’s even more vital to keep their stories alive.
The Holocaust — one of the most brutal chapters in history — is fading fast from human memory. Today, only a few survivors are still alive and able to tell their stories. As a result, awareness is eroding, and antisemitism is on the rise.
Years ago, quite by accident, I had the good fortune to make friends with a Holocaust survivor. His remarkable story touched me deeply. During this time of Holocaust Remembrance, I’m sharing it with you.
The horror begins
At age 36, Eric Behr, a newspaper reporter in Germany, answered a knock at his door. He was confronted by Nazi detectives who took him into custody. His “crime” was that he was both a Jew and a journalist — which to Nazis was a suspicious combination. (Ironically, Behr’s newspaper columns were anything but political. He wrote restaurant reviews.)
As Behr told me: “They never accused me of anything. They said they wanted to question me for two minutes, and the two minutes turned out to be two years.”
