Holocaust survivor speaks at Everett Community College

It’s a tangible piece of a terrible history. During a talk Wednesday at Everett Community College, Holocaust survivor Robert Herschkowitz passed around a mustard-yellow cloth Star of David. It is stamped with the letter J.

Framed in a small case, it doesn’t look as old as it is. Like millions of other Jewish people in Europe, his grandmother was forced by the Nazis to wear the yellow badge more than 70 years ago.

Herschkowitz was a child from Belgium during World War II. To survive, his family fled their homeland. Their odyssey took them through France, into a Nazi-run camp and eventually through the Alps on foot to safety in Switzerland.

The Bellevue man has told his story before, at EvCC and to other groups around the region. Now 76, he continues to share his memories so that others will never forget.

His talk Wednesday was part of the annual EvCC “Surviving the Holocaust” speaker series, now in its 15th year. Humanities instructor Joyce Walker brings Holocaust survivors to campus for her Humanities 150D class. The talks are open to the public.

“It’s always an honor to listen to him,” Walker said. “It’s becoming increasingly difficult to hear the direct stories.” The first two speakers in this spring’s series were descendants of people who lived through the Holocaust.

Herschkowitz, a Boeing Co. retiree, is one of about 15 active members of the Washington State Holocaust Education Resource Center’s speakers bureau. He believes he is the youngest survivor now speaking for the Seattle-based center. Along with survivors’ descendants, the speakers bureau includes U.S. military veterans who were liberators during World War II.

In EvCC’s Henry M. Jackson Conference Center, students born after the Persian Gulf War listened in silence as Herschkowitz talked about the plight of Europe’s Jewish children during the Holocaust. He showed pictures of tiny tots begging for food and being taken away to camps.

The Nazis, he said, killed 1.5 million Jewish children — almost 90 percent of all European Jews younger than 16. Showing a photo of a happy little boy, Herschowitz said, “That’s me.”

He was born in Antwerp, Belgium, in 1938. On May 10, 1940, Germany invaded Belgium. It was occupied until late 1944, when Allied forces liberated Herschkowitz’s homeland. His family left the day Nazis invaded, and crossed the border into France along with thousands of refugees.

German Stuka bombers were overhead as his family made their way along a road. “My father would drop me in a ditch, with my mother on top of me. My father was on top of her, under a suitcase made of cardboard for protection,” he said.

They traveled from northern France, which was occupied by the Nazis, south to Marseilles. At one point, they were arrested but escaped through a bathroom. Marseilles was a free city. Herschkowitz, with false baptism documents, attended a Catholic kindergarten. Family pictures from that time look like vacation scenes, with little Robert on a Marseilles beach. Soon, though, the French were detaining Jews.

In November of 1940, the family was sent to a French internment and transit camp, Rivesaltes, which held Jews and other refugees. When his mother Irene became pregnant in 1942, the family was separated. Herschkowitz and his mother were taken to another camp, called Gras, which was just one farmhouse. On April 7, 1943, his brother Danny was born.

His father Max was still in Rivesaltes, forced to work on a dam project. By then, the French government was sending Jews in Rivesaltes to Drancy, a camp in a Paris suburb. From Drancy, nearly 70,000 Jews were sent to Auschwitz and other death camps.

To avoid Drancy, Herschkowitz’s father planned an escape. He tried to get his younger brother to flee, but Feibush Herschkowitz wouldn’t go when Max Herschkowitz slid down a rope and ran. His brother was gassed by the Nazis.

Saved by a Basque family along the border between France and Spain, Herschkowitz’s father was reunited with his wife and children. They were helped to escape by the French resistance.

In the summer of 1943, they made a three-night trek through the Alps to Switzerland. They were briefly held by Swiss police, but because they had Swiss relatives were allowed to stay.

When the war ended in 1945, the Swiss sent all Belgian Jews home by train. Herschkowitz went on to serve in Belgium’s navy before coming to the United States to work for Boeing. Here, he joined the U.S. Navy Reserve and became a commander.

His immediate family lived through the Holocaust, but so many did not. His mother’s younger sister, Elsa Schnabel, was a teacher. She died at Auschwitz.

In the audience Wednesday were students from Cedar River Academy, a private elementary and middle school in Enumclaw. Teachers brought them to Everett to hear about the Holocaust. Jared McKenzie, a teacher at the school, said one person’s memories are powerful pieces of a horror story that killed millions.

Herschkowitz has one son, Stephen, a senior deputy prosecutor in King County. Someday, Stephen Herschkowitz will be the one to tell this story.

The final image Robert Herschkowitz showed on a screen Wednesday was a message: “It will never end.”

Julie Muhlstein: 425-339-3460; jmuhlstein@heraldnet.com.

Holocaust film, speaker at EvCC

The Everett Community College Humanities Center will show the documentary “The Boys of Terezin,” about a concentration camp in Nazi-occupied Czechoslovakia, at 12:20 p.m. Wednesday in Baker Hall, Room 120. The film will be introduced by Mina Miller, artistic director of Music of Remembrance, a group dedicated to remembering Holocaust musicians.

Stephen Adler, born in Berlin in 1930, will talk about going to England as part of the Kindertransport that saved Jewish children during the Holocaust at 12:20 p.m. May 21 at EvCC’s Henry M. Jackson Conference Center, Room 101. It’s part of a “Surviving the Holocaust” humanities class but is open to the public. The campus is at 2000 Tower St., Everett.

Talk to us

> Give us your news tips.

> Send us a letter to the editor.

> More Herald contact information.

More in Local News

Traffic idles while waiting for the lights to change along 33rd Avenue West on Tuesday, April 2, 2024 in Lynnwood, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Lynnwood seeks solutions to Costco traffic boondoggle

Let’s take a look at the troublesome intersection of 33rd Avenue W and 30th Place W, as Lynnwood weighs options for better traffic flow.

A memorial with small gifts surrounded a utility pole with a photograph of Ariel Garcia at the corner of Alpine Drive and Vesper Drive ion Wednesday, April 10, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
Death of Everett boy, 4, spurs questions over lack of Amber Alert

Local police and court authorities were reluctant to address some key questions, when asked by a Daily Herald reporter this week.

The new Amazon fulfillment center under construction along 172nd Street NE in Arlington, just south of Arlington Municipal Airport. (Chuck Taylor / The Herald) 20210708
Frito-Lay leases massive building at Marysville business park

The company will move next door to Tesla and occupy a 300,0000-square-foot building at the Marysville business park.

The oldest known meteor shower, Lyrid, will be falling across the skies in mid- to late April 2024. (Photo courtesy of Pixabay)
Clouds to dampen Lyrid meteor shower views in Western Washington

Forecasters expect a storm will obstruct peak viewing Sunday. Locals’ best chance at viewing could be on the coast. Or east.

Everett police officers on the scene of a single-vehicle collision on Evergreen Way and Olivia Park Road Wednesday, July 5, 2023 in Everett, Washington. (Photo provided by Everett Police Department)
Everett man gets 3 years for driving high on fentanyl, killing passenger

In July, Hunter Gidney crashed into a traffic pole on Evergreen Way. A passenger, Drew Hallam, died at the scene.

FILE - Then-Rep. Dave Reichert, R-Wash., speaks on Nov. 6, 2018, at a Republican party election night gathering in Issaquah, Wash. Reichert filed campaign paperwork with the state Public Disclosure Commission on Friday, June 30, 2023, to run as a Republican candidate. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren, File)
6 storylines to watch with Washington GOP convention this weekend

Purist or pragmatist? That may be the biggest question as Republicans decide who to endorse in the upcoming elections.

Keyshawn Whitehorse moves with the bull Tijuana Two-Step to stay on during PBR Everett at Angel of the Winds Arena on Wednesday, April 17, 2024 in Everett, Washington. (Olivia Vanni / The Herald)
PBR bull riders kick up dirt in Everett Stampede headliner

Angel of the Winds Arena played host to the first night of the PBR’s two-day competition in Everett, part of a new weeklong event.

Simreet Dhaliwal speaks after winning during the 2024 Snohomish County Emerging Leaders Awards Presentation on Wednesday, April 17, 2024, in Everett, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
Simreet Dhaliwal wins The Herald’s 2024 Emerging Leaders Award

Dhaliwal, an economic development and tourism specialist, was one of 12 finalists for the award celebrating young leaders in Snohomish County.

In this Jan. 12, 2018 photo, Ben Garrison, of Puyallup, Wash., wears his Kel-Tec RDB gun, and several magazines of ammunition, during a gun rights rally at the Capitol in Olympia, Wash. (AP Photo/Ted S. Warren)
With gun reform law in limbo, Edmonds rep is ‘confident’ it will prevail

Despite a two-hour legal period last week, the high-capacity ammunition magazine ban remains in place.

Everett Fire Department and Everett Police on scene of a multiple vehicle collision with injuries in the 1400 block of 41st Street. (Photo provided by Everett Fire Department)
1 in critical condition after crash with box truck, semi in Everett

Police closed 41st Street between Rucker and Colby avenues on Wednesday afternoon, right before rush hour.

The Arlington Public Schools Administration Building is pictured on Tuesday, April 16, 2024, in Arlington, Washington. (Ryan Berry / The Herald)
$2.5M deficit in Arlington schools could mean dozens of cut positions

The state funding model and inflation have led to Arlington’s money problems, school finance director Gina Zeutenhorst said Tuesday.

Lily Gladstone poses at the premiere of the Hulu miniseries "Under the Bridge" at the DGA Theatre, Monday, April 15, 2024, in Los Angeles. (AP Photo/Chris Pizzello)
Mountlake Terrace’s Lily Gladstone plays cop in Hulu’s ‘Under the Bridge’

The true-crime drama started streaming Wednesday. It’s Gladstone’s first part since her star turn in “Killers of the Flower Moon.”

Support local journalism

If you value local news, make a gift now to support the trusted journalism you get in The Daily Herald. Donations processed in this system are not tax deductible.