The Holocaust Memorial Center’s Henrietta and Alvin Weisberg Gallery – a permanent structure that will house a boxcar known to be used by the Nazis to transport European Jews to concentration camps during World War II -- is on track for its opening in late fall.
George Vine went to see it.
And though willing to pose in front of it, he could not go inside. Unlike when he was 15 and he and his parents boarded a similar boxcar, nobody forced him.
“They picked us up on Nov. 18, 1942,” recalled Vine, 85, of West Bloomfield. “My father, my mother, my aunts and uncles and cousins, we were all taken to the train. Some died before we got there and some died fighting the Germans. They pushed us into these cars, men, women and children, and closed the door. They filled one up, then went to the next car and did the same.”
Then the train filled with more than a thousand souls, standing in the dark, rumbled away.
Four days later, the train stopped and the soldiers opened the doors.
They had arrived in Auschwitz, a known Nazi concentration and extermination camp. Those who were still alive, including the babies who were born on the way, were hurled out of the railcars and into the cold dead air that was filled with the stench of human waste and suffering. Before Vine and his parents could gather their thoughts, they were separated.
Vine was one of 300 men pushed to the left as part of a group selected for the labor camp on the grounds of Auschwitz. The rest were herded to the right, in a line that stretched from the train to the gas chambers and crematoriums.
“That was the last time I saw my mother and father,” said Vine, looking at documents clutched in his hands. These were his official records, a registration of his time at the Nazis concentration camp. A friend mailed them to him following the war.
Talking to groups of children and adults about his experiences as a Holocaust survivor is important to Vine, as it is a retelling of history that should be known but never repeated. The German documents tell the story when things are too painful to share, or too horrible to believe.
To think that other human beings would force people into a room with no windows, no ventilation, sanitation, food or water and make them stand there for days (even weeks if there was a problem with the tracks along the way) is unimaginable. That is why having the boxcar at the Center is so important.
It was acquired last September with the cooperation of the German National Railroad and the Technical (Railroad) Museum in Berlin. While it is not 100 percent certain it was one of the boxcars used to transport Jews bound for concentration camps, it is certified as being the type used.
Vine needed no proof of its authenticity. The sight of it alone triggered his memory.
Born in 1927 in Ciechanow, Poland, near the Prussian border, Vine lived with his parents in a modest home, surrounded by relatives. He attended public school, played sports, and like his children and grandchildren today, looked forward to weekends. Friday nights were especially beautiful and very religious for Vine. That’s when his mother dressed up and lit candles while he and his father walked to the synagogue in town. When they returned home, a lavish meal prepared by his mother would await them. Vine said his mother was a gracious hostess loved by all.
When the war broke out, Vine’s German-born father remained upbeat. As Vine explained in his biography for the Holocaust center, “He felt that the Germans were kind, intelligent and treated the Jews fairly during World War I.”
Then things changed.
In 1939, the Germans set up a local government in Vine’s hometown and created laws that singled out the Jewish population: Jewish children could no longer attend school (they closed them just to be sure), Jewish civil servants were fired and all businesses owned by Jews were closed.
A thousand families were ordered to meet in the city square, and Vine’s father was selected as the leader. At the meeting they were told that they would have to resettle in another city. Vine remembers German soldiers hitting people over the head with clubs and forcing them onto trucks that took them to Nowe Miasto (meaning New Town), a small town in the same district as the Polish ghetto. Disease, especially typhoid, broke out and half the people died, until neighbors in their hometown got word of their plight and raised money to help. To this day, the term landsmen describes a person who helps someone from their hometown.
Among the sick was Vine.
He recovered, but his father, having almost lost his only remaining child, became determined to raise money for additional food. (As a result, when they boarded the train headed for the concentration camp, Vine was in superb health.) After the typhoid scare, the families were again relocated to another town, but given food along the way. Shortly after that, they were taken to the trains. Vine said his father remained optimistic -- until it became clear that the boxcar they were in was carrying them to their death.
It happened suddenly on the third day. After standing forever, Vine’s father pulled him close and with urgency told him, “Son, I apologize for making you believe how wonderful the Germans are. I have a wish and a request for you. All of us are going to die. You are 15 years old and you are the only one who has a chance to survive.” That was the vision that his father had in his mind. “We are going to be killed as soon as we get out of this (boxcar). You must survive. At any price, you must survive because when all of this is over, people all over the world won’t be able to believe what happened to us today,” he said. “It’s not that they are bad people, but their brains won’t be able to comprehend that this is true.”
The words of his father lingered, as the boxcar’s scraping metal doors opened.
Vine doesn’t remember much after his parents were torn away from him.
Holocaust survivor Helen Handler, 83, went to see the World War II-era boxcar in Arizona like the one in Farmington Hills. She told reporters when the doors opened all she could see for miles and miles was barbed wire, men in striped pajamas and women with shaved heads.
Handler’s mother thought maybe it was a hospital.
“(But) the men in the striped pajamas, Jews who had arrived at the camp earlier, shouted advice, trying to help: ‘Leave everything, and just go,’ they said. Don’t make the soldiers yell at you. Give the small children to their grandmothers,” said the story about Handler by the Associated Press. As she and Vine learned later, the old and the very young were sorted out to die, and a mother in her 20s or 30s could save her own life by letting her youngster go.
By the time Vine reached the labor camp (on the grounds of Auschwitz) he knew being 15 was not a good thing, so he lied about his age.
“See here, there is my name and birthdate,” said Vine, pointing to the Nazis records. “You see how I must have been thinking?”
Instead of 1927, a boy of 15 wrote 1926, making him a man of 16. From the moment he was made to stand naked in the cold, waiting to be showered (or possibly gassed he didn’t know) and tattooed with the number 77522, to his days of being beaten and marched to Dachau, Vine mustered the courage and wisdom to fulfill his father’s wishes to survive, and to testify.
There was a brief time after Vine’s liberation, as a 19-year-old refugee trying to build a new life in America, that he tried to wipe away his past, including the identifying number that the Germans had etched into his arm.
“It didn’t work,” he said, rolling up his sleeve to reveal the ghostly white number that had remained after the black ink was gone. The landsmen who knew Vine saw his actions as betrayal. “They interpreted it to mean that I was embarrassed to be associated with them (other Jewish Holocaust survivors) but this was the furthest thing from the truth he said. “I was very angry at God, because I came from a very religious family, but also felt this was the strength that kept me going,” Vine said. Besides that, he was determined not to let what the Nazis did kill his chance for a new life.
At 85, he’s found his way back to his religion, and a woman he loved. They had three children, and when he lost her to cancer, he found love again, with Judy. Now he’s a grandfather and great-father who tries to honor his father’s words and the landsmen who not only share his past but his reason for telling the world about the railcars.
“I realize it’s childish to do the things that I did -– trying to erase my number -- but I did it. I am what I am,” Vine said.