By Aaron Vehling

They come and round you up - not just you, but thousands of others like you.

Itís bad enough you had to wear a yellow star on your arm, an indication to everyone that you were ìdifferentî and of a lower class of human being. Now they are piling your friends, family and neighbors into freight trains and shipping them off to ìcamps.î The able-bodied men are sent to work camps, as their manpower could prove useful.

This incident is usually the territory of documentaries, movies and books, but on May 3 Dr. Robert Fisch brought that reality to the choir room in the North Branch High School in a discussion of his experience in a Nazi concentration camp.

Though his presentation took place close to the 60th anniversary of VE Day, Fisch, 80, said the purpose of his speech was not to teach a history lesson about the Holocaust or simply tell his ìhorror story.î His was a lesson of tolerance.

ìIn order to be respected, you have to respect others,î he said in his Hungarian accent.

Using slides from ìLight from the Yellow Star: A Lesson of Love from the Holocaust,î a book he wrote and illustrated in 1996, Fisch told the story of his experience in a world of Holocaust and extended the message of mutual respect to the students.

The Hungary in which Fisch grew up in the 1930s and 1940s was sympathetic to the causes of the Nazis. The result of this hit home. Fisch, 18 and a recent high school graduate, was barred from attending university because he was a Jew. In addition, he was required to wear a yellow Star of David ribbon around his arm so everyone at all times would aware of his Jewish blood. To add to all of this, the Hungarian government sent Jews to ghettos where one room would accommodate six families, Fisch said.

But this political stance did not translate to a widespread knowledge of concentration camps, Fisch said. Instead, the reality of the situation only hit him when he saw what fate had in store for the Jews - they were crammed tightly into train cars with a bucket of water and sent to concentration camps.

ìThat moment changed me,î he said.

While many Jews (an Gentiles alike) were sent to concentration camps, some of the men were sent to work camps, said Fisch, who spent time in both.

In January 1945, the Nazis saw defeat as imminent, Fisch said, and wanted to hide their wrongdoings. They took him and other workers out of German work camps and marched them to a crowded concentration camp in Austria.

The Nazis forced those bound for concentration camps to march for days without food. Fisch said along the way they slept in a building that had hundreds of people ìall very weekî and wasting away.

ìLice were rampant,î he said. ìThere was no food and people slept in their own excrement.î

Fisch and others eventually got typhoid, which caught the attention of the Germans, who were afraid of acquiring it from their prisoners. The soldiers medicated and fed the sick, but that was not the end of it.

ìAn SS soldier came to us and said he had room for 30 people in a hospital,î Fisch said. ìI refused to go. I didnít trust them.î

He was told he was crazy for not pursuing this offer. Fischís intuition was sound, though. Those who did take the SS up on their offer were killed without ever seeing a hospital.

Continuing on the death march, the prisoners, famished after a five-day hike without food or drink, came upon a village where a kind soul made an effort to help them out.

A women threw an apple to a group of prisoners, who Fisch said ìhowled and pursued the apple.î

The Nazis shot her. Despite the threat of a fate similar to this women, there was ìalways someone unexpectedly trying to be helpful.î
Just before the Americans liberated the concentration camps, Fisch reached a point where he felt death was a better option than what he was going through.

As he was sleeping one night he heard bombs falling outside the camp, but didnít care, he said.

ìI felt like I wanted to die,î he said.

His whole family, save for his mother and the Catholic woman who raised him, were killed in the Holocaust. Of 600,000 Hungarian Jews, only 80,000 survived.

Unfortunately for Hungary, and the young Fisch, life after the fall of the Nazi regime was no utopia. The Communists soon took over the country.

Fisch practiced medicine and became a doctor. He helped out the revolution against communism by offering his services. For punishment, the Hungarian government sent him to the countryside. He escaped to the United States in 1956 and randomly selected Minnesota as his destination.

Fisch is now a world-renowned pediatrician at the University of Minnesota and has had his artwork exhibited in Minneapolis, Israel, Austria, Washington, D.C. and Memphis.

Linda Mielke, a secretary for the ECFE, was once Fischís secretary. Her husband, Jim Mielke, a long-term substitute English teacher at the high school, has been reading Holocaust books with his class and said he was excited to have the opportunity to have Fisch present in his class.

Fisch built on his message of tolerance. He told the students that they must be ìhumane even in inhumane circumstancesî and they must stand up for what is right.

ìYou have to stand up against injustice,î he said. ìDonít be indifferent. Stand up for your right.î

Fisch said he didnít like being labelled a ìHolocaust survivor.î

ìMy life is more about surviving the Holocaust,î he said. ìI am a happy person. I have a beautiful daughter, a lovely wife. I have had a fulfilled life.î

More information on Fisch and his organization, the Yellow Star Foundation, can be obtained at www.yellowstarfoundation.org.

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