After the film, David Shentow arrived and very humbly told his story.
He talked about the horror he witnessed as soon as he arrived in Auschwitz, the separation of the people in two groups, the dogs trained to kill, the brutal murder of a baby. He went on to describe the constant misery, hunger, thirst, the lack of food, the brutal work and death, death, death everywhere.
I was very moved by his story. It was disturbing to me: the inherited photo album is an old relic that I happened to be given, so I started to search for clues, but it still remains an old relic of days gone by, after all these people are long dead.
Yet, seeing Mr. Shentow in the flesh gave me a shock; he was from the same era than my photo album. It was as if a character from the album had come to life, leapt out of the pages. After reading the horror stories about the camps, after seeing terrible pictures from the past, there he was, someone who had experienced first-hand the turmoil and the brutality of war, someone who was around when all the people in the pictures were doing the things they were doing, invading Belgium, France, bombing villages, etc.
Mr. Shentow is a soft-spoken man, telling his story in a quiet voice, saying it just like it is. He said he cries very often. He does not want people to applaud or clap their hands: “I am not an entertainer, I am a witness”.
He showed us the number tattooed on his arm. He answered all the questions.
Thank you Mr. Shentow, for coming out on a cold winter night to tell your story.
Below is the info sheet from the AF:
Summary
In the days following the Red Army’s entrance into the concentration camp zone of Auschwitz-Birkenau in January 1945, several manuscripts concealed in makeshift wrappings were found buried in the vicinity of the crematoriums. Three of them were written in Yiddish. Their authors were Sonderkommando, "special units" of deportees in charge of operating the crematoriums and annex installations of the death industry conceived by the Nazis: undressing room, gas chamber, ovens and incineration pits. These texts are the most terrifying and perhaps the most authentic literature about what the Nazis called “the final solution of the Jewish question.” Four sonnderkommando made sworn statements before courts just after their liberation. These manuscripts, written at the very time of their functioning, and the testimonies made in the weeks that followed, reveal what the Nazis sought to conceal and erase at any price: how the extermination process was conducted at Auschwitz.
About David Shentow
David Shentow was held in captivity in concentration camps between 1942 to 1945, before the age of 20. Now He feels it his obligation to speak about his experiences to educate young people and to speak out against Holocaust deniers.
Shentow is born in Warsaw, Poland in 1925, and moved to Antwerp, Belgium as an infant, as his family sought to escape anti-semitism. In August of 1942, Shentow and his father were ordered by the Gestapo to report to the Antwerp railway station. This was the last time Shentow saw his mother and two sisters. Shentow was deported to a work camp at Dannes-Camiers near Dieppe in France and was later put on a train and sent to Auschwitz.
Shentow recalled how after the four day trip, 3000 people disembarked from the train in Auschwitz in October 1942. There he saw people in striped pajamas, caps, and wooden clogs and did not know where he had arrived. The women, children, disabled, elderly and anyone wishing to join their wife were instructed to move to the left. While 1800 people now stood to the left, a doctor examined the remaining 1200 men and boys and determined whether each one would move to the left or to the right. Shentow was sent to the right with about 700 other males, they would work in Auschwitz.
In July 1943, Shentow was transferred with a group of 2000 prisoners from Auschwitz to the remains of what had been the Warsaw Ghetto. Their task was to level the ruins of buildings shattered during the Ghetto Uprising. Shentow was responsible for loosening the bricks on the buildings for dismantling. He lived within the ghetto walls for one year among the lice, filth, dirt and typhoid.
In August 1944, anticipating the advancing Russian army, the Nazis sent 5000 Jewish prisoners on a death march to Dachau. They walked 50 – 60 miles each day. Those who couldn’t keep up were shot. During this trek, he experienced unbearable heat and thirst. Only 3000 prisoners were left when they reached a river. Pandemonium ensued when the prisoners clambered to enter the water to cool off and drink. Order was restored when the Nazis began shooting the prisoners.
From there they were put on a cattle train, 120 people per box car, and taken to Dachau.
Shentow spent one year at Dachau and was liberated by the American army, on April 29, 1945, his twentieth birthday. He refers to this momentous day as “the day he was born again.”
Every day of his 3 years stay in the concentration camps was like “living hell”. As the only survivor from an extended family of 17, Shentow considers his survival “a miracle”.
Shentow, who now lives in Ottawa, came to Canada in 1949 to restart his life. He got married, had children and considers it his mission to ensure that the Holocaust is never forgotten.