Holocaust Speakers: Different Messages, Same Goal

At first glance, Harry Schneider and Moritz Kulenkampff might seem to have little in common, save for a friendly demeanor and gift for the spoken word.

Schneider is a septuagenarian who lives in the Pittsburgh suburb of Churchill. Kulenkampff is 20 years old and hails from Berlin, Germany. But they share a common goal: to promote awareness of the Holocaust, with the hope that nothing like it occurs again.

Schneider carries on the legacy of Holocaust survivors who provide firsthand accounts of their travails. His story focuses on his family fleeing into the forest shortly after Germany invaded his native Poland.

Kulenkampff carries on the legacy of Action Reconciliation Service for Peace (Aktion Sühnezeichen Friedensdienste), an organization that has been fighting racism and discrimination for half a century. Through the group, he volunteers for the Holocaust Center of the Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh.

Both men spoke Thursday to an appreciative audience of eighth-graders at . Schneider was 2½ when World War II started. Recognizing the danger to his family, Schneider’s father, who was in the Polish army, took his wife, son and a few other relatives into the forest in advance of the invading Germans.

After nearly two years, the small group finally was permitted to enter the Soviet Union, and Schneider’s father promptly was conscripted. The rest of the family wound up in Siberia, where Harry remembers foraging for food as the temperature occasionally dipped to 35 degrees below zero. Meanwhile, many of his relatives had elected to stay put in Poland.

“They didn’t think anything was going to happen to them. They figured the war would be over in days or a month,” Schneider explained. “In 1942, all the Jews that remained in that town were led out of town and were executed by the Gestapo.”

At war’s end, the surviving Schneiders returned to Poland, then they spent nearly five years in European Displaced Persons camps before settling in Washington, PA, in October 1950. Harry quickly learned English, and eventually he graduated from Washington & Jefferson College before starting his own accounting firm, from which he retired about five years ago.

Since then, he has been active as a Holocaust speaker, noting that many other Pittsburgh-area survivors are unable to travel.

“I decided it’s up to me to go to various schools and tell students about the Holocaust,” he said.

Kulenkampff has been accompanying him, giving perspective about his home country.

“Unfortunately, I have to say there is still anti-Semitism today in Germany,” he told the Canonsburg students. “It’s not much; it’s kind of hidden anti-Semitism. But the majority of German society is aware of what happened in the Holocaust, and I think we draw the right conclusions.”

Among those are taking preventive measures against a repeat of the past.

“I do not feel guilty for what happened in the Holocaust. How can I feel guilty for something that happened so many years ago, when I wasn’t even born? But I can feel a responsibility that something like the Holocaust will never happen again.”

Related Topics: Action Reconciliation Service for Peace, Canon-McMillan, Canon-McMillan School District, Canonsburg Middle School, Education, Holocaust, Holocaust survivor, and Jewish Federation of Greater Pittsburgh