Jochen “Jack” Wurfl, 91, is one of just 245,000 survivors of the Holocaust still living, and he is on a mission to warn young people about the dangers of antisemitism as the Israel-Hamas conflict rages.
“I don’t understand why they’re not better educated through the schools in this country because this is history, after all,” the Baltimore resident said in a video interview with Washington Times and Higher Ground columnist Billy Hallowell. “And what history is more important? Who else killed 6 or 7 million people within a matter of two or three years, as Hitler did?”
Mr. Wurfl immigrated to the U.S. at 17 with his elder brother, Peter, from their native Germany after losing their family in the Nazi death camps. Their Jewish mother, Catholic father, grandparents, aunts and uncles were all killed.
His harrowing story of survival, including his participation in the Hitler Youth to try to hide his Jewish heritage, is detailed in the autobiography “My Two Lives.” Mr. Wurfl hopes the account, written initially to document for his descendants the family’s suffering, helps others take antisemitism more seriously after the Oct. 7 invasion of Israel by Hamas, a Palestinian terrorist group.
The book recollects his experiences amid a growing debate about the definition of antisemitism, or hatred of Jewish people. Although the State Department and leading international agencies do not consider criticism of Israel to be antisemitic, Jewish advocacy groups say it is not always possible to separate hatred of Israel from hatred of Jews.
In his interview, Mr. Wurfl did not take sides in that debate. Even though he has asked people to define antisemitism ever since he was “old enough to understand that Hitler was no good,” he said he never understood the hatred that killed his parents.
SEE ALSO: I survived the Holocaust by hiding in the Hitler Youth
“What is it about the Jews, that the Jews are so bad that they all have to be killed? And no one ever gave me a proper answer, no one,” Mr. Wurfl said.
Surveys have shown many American teens and young adults lack basic knowledge of the Holocaust amid a nationwide rise in antisemitic violence and speech, including widespread pro-Hamas demonstrations on college campuses since the conflict in Israel started.
Shortly after Hamas invaded Israel, the Anti-Defamation League reported that antisemitic incidents in the U.S. rose by 388% from Oct. 7 through Oct. 23 from the same period in 2022. Antisemitic incidents are reported across the U.S. and around the globe, even as the world is set to observe International Holocaust Remembrance Day on Saturday.
Mr. Wurfl’s book has accumulated a fast-growing audience. It was published shortly before the Hamas incursion, which killed more than 1,200 civilian Israelis and foreign nationals.
“Now, I’m really happy that it did, because [I’m] hoping that a lot of people will read the book — and especially younger people — and will learn a little bit about what … antisemitism is all about,” he said. “And what’s happening right now in Israel, with Hamas, that’s a terrible thing.”
He described the way Hamas killed Israelis “in front of their children, and the children in front of their parents” as “just horrible.”
“Hopefully, people will read it, more and more people,” he said. “And hopefully, if I can just change the mind of a few people, a handful of people, I think the book was worth all the trouble.”
In The Times video, Mr. Wurfl describes what happened to his family.
Mr. Wurfl said he was “a little over 10 years old” the last time he saw his mother alive. His father had been taken to a concentration camp but continued to communicate with the family by bribing an SS officer to send messages.
One morning, as the two brothers returned to their Berlin apartment building from an errand exchanging the secret letters, they found the Gestapo and SS taking away their mother in a car.
A couple of days later, they sneaked into their mother’s prison to see her for the last time. She encouraged them to behave themselves, to contact a lawyer she knew and to “leave right now” before the guards caught them.
A guard grabbed the brothers on their way out of the prison, but the boys shook loose from his grip.
“He was after us, but he couldn’t run as fast as we could,” Mr. Wurfl recalled. “So after a couple of blocks, we had totally lost him. That was the last time we saw our mother.”
Mr. Wurfl said the love of his family and the help of sympathetic strangers within the Nazi system helped him survive.
At the outbreak of World War II in 1939, his parents sent the two brothers to their Catholic grandparents in Berlin for baptism. That allowed 7-year-old Jack and 8-year-old Peter to avoid wearing the Star of David and going to a concentration camp.
After their mother’s arrest, his grandfather sent them to a children’s camp in northern Germany. He paid a woman who ran the camp to hide them among the other children.
The woman persuaded the boys to protect themselves from scrutiny by joining the Hitler Youth, a paramilitary group Mr. Wurfl recalled was “mandatory for anyone who was not Jewish.”
He and Peter encouraged each other to keep up the charade despite their discomfort at learning how to throw grenades, shoot bazookas and snap the Hitler salute.
The camp director informed them on Christmas Day that their mother had died at Auschwitz. The director learned the news from the boys’ teacher, an SS member who also knew about their Jewish roots.
“I guess I cried a lot at that moment, but before you knew, the time was there to go back to the Hitler Youth meetings. And we continued doing that,” he said.
Whenever the Gestapo came to question their identity, the camp director and SS man protected them.
After this “first life” ended, Mr. Wurfl went to New York through a U.S. program funded by Catholics and Jews to resettle orphaned European children.
He worked in a necktie factory for a year and got a job in the insurance industry during this “second life.” Later, he built a family and a successful insurance business.
One thing that surprised him about the U.S. after the war was the number of people who had heard little about the Holocaust.
“Coming to the United States, I was surprised that so many people did not know more about it,” Mr. Wurfl said.
As he discussed antisemitism with Mr. Hallowell, the aging Holocaust survivor emphasized the loss of his family to those who would minimize or deny the toll.
“Everybody was dead, everybody was killed, they all were taken to concentration camps and killed,” Mr. Wurfl said.
• Sean Salai can be reached at ssalai@washingtontimes.com.
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