How Does Arek Hersh Affect The Horrors Of The Holocaust?

The Holocaust was a time when the Nazi’s went on their terrifying plan to eliminate the jewish population from the face of the Earth and putting the “Aryan” race as the rulers. Fortunately the Nazis did not achieve this goal and ⅓ of the jewish population survived to tell the horrors of the Holocaust and one of those people is Arek Hersh. Arek Hersh was born in Sieradz, Poland in 1929 whose father was a boot maker for the army and had four siblings. In Poland “He remembers going to the park in the summer, ice-skating on the river in winter and singing solos in the choir.” (Holocaust Learning) Arek also went remembers going to a jewish elementary school along with a mixed secondary school. However, the Jews were disturbed by the anti semitism
in 1938 especially after the “Pollination” were the germans got rid of many Polish jewish citizen across the border. Arek and his family had to move to relatives in Lodz for one reason, the nazis who were invading Poland at this time “Arek remembers seeing the German motorbikes, tanks and planes that far outclassed anything the Polish army had to fight with.” (Holocaust learning).
Around 1941 the nazis came for Arek’s father but his father and Arek’s brother managed to escape leaving the nazis to take Arek instead. After that “He spent the night in a police station and the following day he and other prisoners were taken to a railway station where Arek's brother was waiting and wanted to take Arek's place. Arek refused.” (Holocaust learning). Arek was taken to Otosho where he was able to steal food due to his job cleaning the commander of the camps office and not have to be forced to cannibalism. Finally after months in the camp he was released and sent home being one of the eleven out of 2500 originally sent to the
camp. Near the end of WWII Arek heard the bombers which was a sign that the Nazis were losing the war but that most likely lead to the decision to clear the Auschwitz camp. Arek remembers “They took the remaining prisoners on a forced march, known as the death march, for three days with no food, wearing only their striped camp uniforms in deep snow and temperatures as low as minus 25 degrees. The survivors found themselves in Buchenwald in Germany where Arek was put into a children's barrack. In April he and 3000 other people were taken to the city of Weimar in Germany, loaded onto open wagons and sent off on a month-long rail journey to Theresienstadt” (Holocaust learning). Only 600 including Arek were able to survive long enough to be liberated by the Russian Army. After a few months Arek along with 299 other children were taken to the lake district in Windermere by plane where he had english lessons and learned a trade after moving to liverpool.
Unfortunately his family was not lucky to survive as he did as they were all gassed and “only 40 people from his home town survived the war” (Holocaust learning) However, Arek wouldn't talk about these experiences until he wrote his book “A Detail in History” in 1996 which tells his story of survival. Later on in his life he went back to Auschwitz in Poland where his family had been murdered along with other 1.5 million Jews. Now “Arek goes to schools, universities and other organisations to talk about his experience of the Holocaust. He hopes that by doing this he can help young people to build a better world.” (Holocaust
Learning). Now begs the question ‘What did I learn from this from the Holocaust survivor report?’. Well for starters, I learned another one of the stories of the people who survived the horrors of The Holocaust. Not to mention how sad some of these stories are like in Arek’s story where he had lost his family and was the only survivor left. What’s even sadder is Arek has memories before the anti-semitism about how he used to ice skate in the river or his normal life before the Nazis. That is what I learned from this Holocaust survivor report from Arek Hersh's story.