Holocaust Survivor and Native German Come Together for Talk at Woodland Hills Junior High

Harry Schneider and Phillip Hamm are bridging a gap between generations and sides to form a united front to promote peace and the preservation of history.

Schneider of Churchill survived the Holocaust as a baby in exile from his native country of Poland. He spoke with Hamm, with whom he connected with at the Holocaust Center in Squirrel Hill, at Woodland Hills Junior High School Friday morning in the auditorium to a group of eigth graders.

“I am a child Holocaust survivor and was the same age as you when I came to the United States,” Schneider said. “I was placed in eighth grade and couldn’t speak any English, had a very good English teacher who spent many evenings with me. After a short period of time I was able to understand and get along and even at this time I am still learning.”

Hamm, 20, of Hamburg, Germany, refused to serve in the German military and chose to serve his country instead by staying in Pittsburgh for a year through the Action Reconciliation Service for Peace program, created to help his native country reconcile with all of the countries affected by the Nazis.

“When my parents were alive, I didn’t ask them too many questions about the war,” Schneider said during the first half of the program. “Every time I tried, they said, you’re in America, make the best of it - we don’t want to talk about the past.”

Before World War II began, he described life in Poland as difficult, but peaceful.

“No one could have envisioned the horrors that awaited the Jewish people,” Schneider said. “Once Hitler invaded Germany and spread anti-semitic hatred to our country, their army invaded Poland and life was changed forever.”

Schneider lived in a small village near the capital of Poland, Warsaw. He was two and a half years old when the Germans invaded Poland on Dec. 1, 1939. On Dec. 3, France and Britain declared war on Germany, thus beginning World War II.

In 1939, Schneider’s father was in the Polish army.

“He came home and took my mother and I into the forest and we escaped before the Germans arrived,” he said.

His uncle, aunt and cousin went with them. But his grandparents, aunts, uncles and their children all remained in the village.

“They didn’t think anything could happen to them,” Schneider said. “In 1942, three years later, all the Jews who remained were executed by the Gestapo.”

His family members who stayed behind all were murdered. On Sept. 28, 1939, Poland was partitioned between Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union. During that time, his uncle, who had fled the village with them, was killed in a raid. His family was able to escape to the Russian side of the border.

“Also, when we were in Russia in 1941, my sister was born,” Schneider said. “My father and uncle were taken into the Russian army and then the Russian government took my sister, cousin and I, put us on a train, and sent us to the mountains near Siberia.”

It took them three weeks to reach their destination. Many times, the trains were bombed by the Germans and they had to get on and off the for crews to fix the rails.

“We ended up living with a woman in Russia whose husband was in the army on the Western front,” Schneider said. “I remember there was very little food and it was very cold during the winter. In Siberia, it’s 35 degrees below zero, so you can imagine how cold it can be.”

As a child, he oftentimes had to find food from farms and also dug potatoes out of the ground.

“Food during the war was rationed and I remember being in line at 6 years old to try to get a little milk for my sister, but somehow we managed to survive the war,” he said. “After the war, we left Russia and returned to Poland. We didn’t know whether my father was alive or not and hadn’t seen him in four years.”

He had also returned to Poland looking to see if his family was alive. He finally was able to find his children at a displacement camp.

“We didn’t want to stay in Poland any longer because our home was destroyed and the rest of the family was murdered,” he said.

In 1948, President Truman allowed 100,000 Jewish people from the camps into the U.S. and Schneider’s family was among the fortunate ones.

“However, it took us almost two years to get a visa,” he said. “The Jewish community in Washington, Pa. sponsored us, and we came to the states in 1950 when I was 13 years old.”

Schneider told the group that 90 percent of Poland’s three million Jewish people perished during the Holocaust.

“The most important message I can leave with you as a Holocaust survivor is that we must eliminate prejudice and hatred,” he said. “It doesn’t do anyone any good to hate or be hated. No one wins.”

Hamm discussed his own connections to the Holocaust, with one grandfather who was a leader of the Hitler youth movement and a great-grandfather on another side of the family who hid a Jewish woman in his home, eventually saving her life.

“People involved in the Holocaust did not talk about their own experiences, not to their own kids, because they didn’t know how to deal with the shame,” Hamm said. “It took them many years to talk about this. I work with a lot of Holocaust survivors and they tell me how difficult it is. I would like to share my story.”

Hamm described his own journey of asking his grandfather how he was involved in the Holocaust. At 17, he wanted answers.

“We have learned from our history and there are students like me who spend one year abroad in order to teach about the Holocaust and to show that we can learn from history,” Hamm said. “This history is a part of my own identity. Mankind has made so many mistakes - and mistakes that have been repeated -- but we can learn from this.”