Holocaust survivor Dr. John Saunders spoke about his journey escaping five concentration camps at Tufts Hillel last night as part of the Cummings/Hillel Program for Holocaust and Genocide Education.
The 1952 graduate of the Tufts School of Dental Medicine shared his life story to a packed chapel of over 200 students, faculty, staff and guests at the Granoff Family Hillel Center.
The Cummings/Hillel Program began last year when Trustee Emeritus William Cummings (A '58) and his wife, Joyce, donated funds to create a Holocaust and Genocide Education program through Tufts Hillel. Last fall, the program brought Holocaust survivor EliezerAyalon to campus to share his story.
Saunders, emphasizing the "miraculous" nature of his experience throughout the Holocaust, detailed how the Gestapo transported him from his hometown in Poland to different camps and prisons across Eastern Europe, including Birkenau and Mauthausen concentration camps, until he was liberated from Mauthausen-Gusen I in 1945.
"If you take anything away from this lecture, let it be this: Something may happen to you during your lifetime. It happens to all of us," Saunders said. "You always have to be ready and willing to deal with it."
From witnessing the persecution and murder of people he knew to hiding in a car tire for several days to avoid capture, Saunders said he was able to fight to survive because he knew his family would be waiting for him on the other side.
"Someone ... told me, ‘Don't look back; only look forward,'" Saunders said. "‘There's nothing in the back.' I've never forgotten his advice."
Once liberated, Saunders went back to Poland, where he thought his family would be waiting for him, because, if he didn't, he said his mother would "die from pain." When he returned to his hometown, though, he learned Nazi soldiers had killed his relatives.
"If I knew my parents weren't alive [while in the concentration camps], I wouldn't have survived," Saunders said.
Saunders attributed his survival to a series of escapes that he could only explain as miracles, like escaping 100 whips from Dr. Joseph Mengele, known as Auschwitz's "angel of death."
"I'm lucky, I'm a survivor and I believe in miracles," Saunders said as he concluded his speech. "If you believe in miracles, you believe in God. I've never joined any temple, though, because I have trouble understanding what happened."
Before the lecture began, Saunders sat down for dinner with a smaller group of students, faculty, staff and guests, answering questions about his experiences in a more intimate setting. Saunders explained then that once he came to the United States, he felt obligated to serve the military who had freed him from Mauthausen-Gusen I years before.
"I paid Uncle Sam my duty," Saunders said. "The military felt like family to me."
After the lecture, Saunders took questions from several members of the audience, who asked him to go into greater detail about aspects of his escapes from concentration camps.
"I had to have some fun to survive," he said. "To survive you had to have a sense of humor."
Junior Emma Goldstein, one of the event's coordinators, invited the audience to view "The Gates of Hell," an art exhibit, after Saunders answered the last question from the audience.
The art, which is on display in the Hillel lobby, features sketches from Zinovii Tolkatchev, a member of the Russian military whose unit helped liberate Auschwitz in 1945. Twenty of his drawings, which are from the Yad VaShem Holocaust Museum in Jerusalem, are on display until Nov. 11.
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An earlier version of this article incorrectly stated that John Saunders was liberated from Auschwitz. He was actually liberated by the U.S. Army on May 5, 1945 from Mauthausen-Gusen I concentration camp. His liberation by the 11th Armored Division of the U.S. Army prompted him to join the U.S. Air Force and fight during the Korean War.
