2008 Woodie Awards
Constant courage
79-year-old Detroit man shares Holocaust experience
By: Thomas Marcetti
Issue date: 11/30/07 Section: News
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Three of his classmates were critically injured and the teacher at the school, specifically designated for Jewish students, urged the rest to go home as quick as they could.
"We knew already. We knew how to run," he said. "The streets were not safe for us."
The Holocaust may have not started until 1939, Lowenberg said, but things got worse for Jewish people in Germany starting in 1933.
"Everyone was German and we believed in Germany," the 79-year-old Holocaust survivor said. "But Germany did not believe in us. We were like the dirt on the ground."
Lowenberg, who now lives in Detroit, came to campus Thursday to speak in History Professor Eric Johnson's HST 280: Nazi Germany and the Holocaust class.
Three weeks ago, Johnson's class had the chance to hear Hubert Lintz speak about growing up in Germany and being required to participate as a member of the Hitler Youth.
"It's important for students to hear different perspectives," Johnson said. "It gives them a chance to meet and ask questions of someone who lived through these events."
A survivor's story
Lowenberg was separated from his family in 1943. He was sent to a slave camp and remained in a ghetto in Latvia.
A week before the end of the war, the Red Cross liberated his camp. At the time, he was 17 and weighed 80 pounds.
His parents and younger twin brothers were not as lucky.
He said after he was moved out of Latvia, the rest of the inhabitants were shipped to the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp.
"I only hope my two twin brothers went into the gas chamber with my parents and didn't suffer," Lowenberg said. "But I'll never know."
The growing darkness
From the beginning of Adolph Hitler's reign, Lowenberg said, laws targeted Jewish people.
Jewish doctors were only allowed to practice on Jewish people. Jewish people were not allowed to have telephones and could not teach in public schools or at universities.
Classrooms were required to have large portraits of Hitler hanging at the front of the room.
On April 20, 1936, Lowenberg's teacher, who was a Nazi party member, singled him out.
"He stared at me and accused me of having stuck out my tongue at Hitler's picture," Lowenberg said. "He called up two boys from the class and had them beat me up."
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