Holocaust survivors spread message of remembrance

Editor's note: This story was originally published in April, 2017.

For Steen Metz, 81, it’s the childhood photograph of him holding ice cream cones, one in each hand. The photo shows one of his last carefree moments before being separated from his father, who starved to death at a concentration camp during the Holocaust.

For Rob Nossen, 79, it’s the copy of his father’s El Salvadorian citizenship papers, which, he believed, spared the lives of his family from joining more than 6 million Jews murdered by Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

For Sabine Van Dam, 80, it’s her earliest memory, at age 3, of Nazi war planes streaking across the sky of her native Holland, a few years before her parents were taken from her, in 1944.

These memories help them share their stories of the Holocaust, keeping it alive with the hopes of preventing it from ever happening again.

“For the first time in my life, I was all alone,” said Van Dam, who for the past 13 years has been a “faraway snowbird,” living in Naples during the winter months and in Holland during the summer. “It was very, very difficult for a child.”

Metz and Nossen lived in adjacent buildings at the Theresienstadt concentration camp in Czechoslovakia but never met during that time.

All three survivors have grown to know each other in recent years, representing 100 or fewer Holocaust survivors living full- or part-time in Southwest Florida.

Their numbers are dwindling. In the twilight of their lives, they share a sense of urgency.

Although Holocaust Remembrance Day falls once a year, they make it their mission whenever possible to get others to learn about and acknowledge one of history’s greatest atrocities.

Six million Jews and 6 million others were murdered by Nazi Germany under the leadership of Adolf Hitler, who between 1932 and 1934 transformed his democratic election into a dictatorship and reign of terror that lasted until his suicide April 30, 1945.

“I try to give them all kinds of small details that will speak to them,” Van Dam said of her audiences. “I try to make it understandable for them. And that’s why I do it, because I think it’s so important. I am one of the youngest survivors, but how long will I be able to tell the story?

“I think it’s all important that you tell it and keep telling it.”

They speak often at schools, libraries, Jewish synagogues and temples, and to tour groups at the Holocaust Museum and Education of Southwest Florida in Naples.

Metz, who leaves his Sanibel Island home this week for Chicago, spent last week speaking at Island Coast High, at a Lehigh Acres library and at the Jewish services Sunday at Temple Beth El in Fort Myers.

Most of the 400 students who witnessed Metz’s hour-long presentation at Island Coast on Thursday appeared to be enthralled. Metz spoke to two groups, one hour each. Afterward, students bombarded him with questions and photograph requests.

“I was very saddened by what happened to him,” said junior Lukes Toussaint, 17, a native of Haiti who immigrated with his family to the United States. “The Nazi people had no remorse. It’s unbelievable that people would do that.”

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Metz wrote about his life in a self-published book titled “A Danish Boy in Theresienstadt: Reflections of a Holocaust Survivor.” He asks for nothing in return from his audiences but one thing.

“I’m going to ask each of you to talk to at least four other people,” Metz told the Island Coast students. “Talk to them about the Holocaust.”

Toussaint and classmates Nicholas Yepes, 16, and Nancy Cepero, 17, pledged to do exactly that.

“There’s some people out there who don’t believe that this really happened,” Cepero said. “It was pretty amazing to have him here. It was an inside story of what happened.”

Metz spent 18 months at Theresienstadt . Nossen spent eight months there. Both were liberated in May, 1945. They were lucky. Of the estimated 150,000 Jews held there, only about 20,000 survived.

Metz’s mother, but not his father, survived the camp. Both of Nossen’s parents survived, moving the family to Paterson, New Jersey, in 1948. Nossen moved to Naples in 1994.

Van Dam lost both her parents to the Holocaust but not her older sister, who lives in Israel.

“My family ended up in Brussels (Belgium) in a house with nine other Jews,” Van Dam said. “There we lived for about 10 months I think or more. And then one night, they broke into the house. I woke up in the night and heard something. I called out to my father, and he didn’t answer. And I opened my eyes, and there was a soldier in the bedroom pointing a gun at me.”

While Van Dam’s parents were taken to Auschwitz, she spent about six months at a holding camp in Belgium before being freed. This brings her to another standout memory, one she often shares with younger audiences.

“The day Belgium was liberated, the Belgian people wanted to do something nice for the prisoners, and they brought us French fries,” Van Dam said. She was 8 at the time, late in 1944. “The kids loved that story.”

Since the Holocaust, the three survivors have paid attention to the genocide that has taken place and is taking place in the years since in places like Rwanda, Bosnia and Darfur.

“You have to understand how bad things were in Germany,” Nossen said of the Holocausts roots. “Money had no value. So what do you do? You elect somebody who promises all sorts of different things. And then what happens when they come to power? Then you have persecution of people. I don’t know where the line draws. Hopefully, we’ll never have another Holocaust, where 12 million people get killed.”

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Preventing future catastrophe and suffering fuels these three survivors to share their childhood histories.

“We certainly haven’t learned from the past, which is very, very sad,” Metz said. “There’s an increasing amount of Holocaust denial, which I hate to see.

“To me, it’s my passion right now. I want to reach as many people as I can, while I can. I try to make up for lost time. I didn’t start speaking until five years ago. I want to spread the word. In about 10 years, none of us will be able to talk about it. We’ll have to rely on the new generation to speak for us.”

Connect with this reporter: David Dorsey (Facebook), @DavidADorsey (Twitter).

About Holocaust Remembrance Day

The internationally recognized date for Holocaust Remembrance Day corresponds to the 27th day of Nisan on the Hebrew calendar. It marks the anniversary of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising. In Hebrew, Holocaust Remembrance Day is called Yom Hashoah. When the actual date of Yom Hashoah falls on a Friday, the state of Israel observes Yom Hashoah on the preceding Thursday. When it falls on a Sunday, Yom Hashoah is observed on the following Monday.
    2017   Monday, April 24
    2018   Thursday, April 12
    2019   Thursday, May 2
    2020   Tuesday, April 21
    2021   Thursday, April 8
    2022   Thursday, April 28 
    2023   Tuesday, April 18
    2024   Monday, May 6
    2025   Thursday, April 24
    2026   Tuesday, April 14 
    2027   Tuesday, May 4
    2028   Monday, April 24
    2029   Thursday, April 12
    2030   Tuesday, April 30

Source: United States Holocaust Memorial Museum