Holocaust survivor David Faber told the Elon community about the horrors of the Nazi concentration camps during World War II in a lecture Monday, Nov. 11. Details...
Faber spoke to a full house in Whitley Auditorium, recounting his experiences during the Holocaust and the effect they had on his life.
Faber was born in Poland in 1926, the youngest of eight children, and was 14 when World War II broke out. Early in the war, Faber’s family fled their home in a predominantly German city near the German border because of growing anti-Jewish sentiment and attacks on their home. They moved to the Polish city of Tarnow, where Faber witnessed the murder of his uncle’s family, and later his own family, by the Nazis.
Just before he was forced to give himself up, Faber made a promise: “If I’ll survive, by a miracle, I promise you I’ll tell the world,” he said.
After turning himself over to the Nazis, Faber spent the remainder of the war in eight different concentration camps. During this time, he was forced to work in the camps’ gas chambers and mines; after the war, he would be a key witness in the trial of Adolf Eichmann, who coordinated much of the Nazis’ “final solution.”
Faber was liberated from Bergen-Belsen in 1945 and moved to London to be with his oldest sister, who had fled there before the war. He later moved to Springfield, Mass., and became an American citizen. “I say, thank you God for giving me another break and a chance at happiness,” he said.