"Have hope, believe and think positive..."

I just finished a book I purchased at the Dallas Holocaust Museum, which was written by the founder Mike Jacobs. It is entitled Holocaust Survivor and it is about 225 pages in length. I started it last night and finished it this afternoon -- it was an easy read. I mean to say that it was easy to read, not easy as in easy to sit with the emotions he was portraying through his words. Not easy to sit with the idea that humans can be so cruel...and cruel is not even a strong enough word to describe what the Nazis were.

Mike Jacobs was born Mendel Jakubowicz in Konin, Poland. He was 14 when the Nazi troops invaded Poland, and spent time in a Jewish ghetto (Ostrowiec) with his parents, three brothers and two sisters. Following a extensive journey in a railroad cart built to hold 12 cows, and stuffed with over 100 humans, he and his family ended up in a line of thousands of people, not knowing where they were to end up. Mr. Jacobs speaks of a gut feeling telling him to go to the right and his parents, two brothers and two sisters went to the left. He never saw them again, as they were sent to the extermination camp Treblinka. He and another brother were placed in a work camp. That brother, Reuven, became part of the resistance group, and was ultimately murdered. At the age of 14, Mike was the sole survivor of his family.

He ended up in Auschwitz-Berkinau in the work camp, and later survived the death march to Mauthausen. He lived in Gusen II until the camp was liberated on May 5, 1945 by the American troops. He weighed 70 pounds and was 19 years old.

He was taken to Germany and lived there, then he moved to Dallas in 1951. He met a woman, got married, became the father of four children, had four grandchildren and was a successful business owner. He began his public speaking in 1956, and spoke with colleges and universities, churches and gave multiple interviews for publication.

He was not bitter at all, but spoke of these atrocities so that the generations after the survivors would never forget. He adamantly believed that because, through those 5 years of suffering, he had hope, believed he would survive and thought positively about things, he survived.

His message is to all of us who think nothing of going to our kitchen for a cup of coffee or a piece of chocolate pie. It is for those who walk out their door, get in their car & go to a place of worship, freely and without persecution. It is for those who were never able to tell their stories and who died horribly inhumane deaths. It is for me, my son and the future so that we "never forget."