Fred Ashner's Holocaust survival story Published May 6, 2009 By Steve Berry 375th Airlift Wing Public Affairs SCOTT AIR FORCE BASE, Ill. -- Two Holocaust survivors told their stories April 30 during the Holocaust Remembrance Breakfast at the Scott Club. Jerry Koenig spoke of his experience escaping from the Warsaw Ghetto, then hiding in an underground bunker for 20 months, and Fred Ashner spoke about his experience in a concentration camp. This is Mr. Ashner's story: As a Jewish child in Germany during the 1930s Fred Ashner's parents shielded him from the forming environment of hate and intolerance. He first realized society was changing on a trip to visit his grandmother in Berlin. "On one of those trips my mother said to me 'if people ask you on the train what you got for Christmas just tell them what you got for Hanukkah without any further explanation,'" Mr. Ashner said. Seeking safety in 1938, Mr. Ashner's family moved to the Netherlands, citing its neutrality during WWI. But in 1940 the German military moved into the Netherlands and segregated the Jewish population. In 1942 all the Jews in the Netherlands were forced to move to Amsterdam. "The Germans wanted to concentrate the Jewish population in one city for efficiency sake," Mr. Ashner said. The Jewish children were forced to attend different schools than the remainder of the population. He said one day all the Jewish school children were told to line up on the sidewalk in front of their school. "The Germans came along and transported everybody off to wherever," Mr. Ashner said. "At that point I made probably the most important decision of my life." While all the children were lining up on the sidewalk Mr. Ashner sneaked off with a woman walking by with her dog. "I went up to her and asked her if I and a friend--a girl--could walk along with her and she said 'yes,' so I pulled the girl by my hand, we went around the corner, and we disappeared," Mr. Ashner said. "Of all those people, the children and the teachers, not one came back from the camps." Mr. Ashner returned home after sneaking away from school that day but he wasn't able to stay free for long. In 1943 Mr. Ashner's family was transported to a concentration camp in Germany. Mr. Ashner was 13-years-old at the time. When he and his parents arrived at the concentration camp they were greeted by barking dogs and Nazi soldiers. "I still remember my father saying, 'now we know where we are,'" Mr. Ashner said. "Things went from worse to worse." In April 1945 the British army was nearing the concentration camp and the Nazis started transporting their prisoners by train away from the concentration camp. The train Mr. Ashner was riding in was met by the Soviet military 60 miles south of Berlin. Free, he walked to a small village and knocked on the door of the first farmhouse he came to. "I would like to see today a picture of what I looked like at that time," Mr. Ashner said. Mr. Ashner, 14, told the farmers his story and they fed him. Then he borrowed a cart from the farmers and went back to the train to retrieve his mother who was unable to walk. They returned to the farm where his mother died 10 days later. He stayed at the farm for approximately two months as WWII was ending. He was eventually taken back to the Netherlands on a Red Cross train. Back in the Netherlands he lived in an orphanage for three weeks before moving in with old friends of his parents. He stayed with the family friends for four years and completed high school. In 1949 he immigrated to the United States to live with extended family in New Jersey.