A promise kept to tell a story that must be told
One of the 'Boys from Buchenwald' shares his life story under the Nazis
BY PATRICIA A. MILLER
Staff Writer

CHRIS KELLY staff Abraham Chapnick, one of the "Boys of Buchenwald," talks to students at the St. Thomas Christian Academy in Brick Township about life in the concentration camp and the impact the Holocaust has had on his life.

Abraham Chapnick was 11 the day his father hid him, his mother, Ann, and his little brother, Morris, in a 10-by-4-foot hole in the ground along with other Jewish women and children.

It would be the last time they were all together.

David Chapnick promised his family he would return.

"He said, 'As soon as I find a good place for you, I'll come back to pick you up,' " Abraham Chapnick recalled.

And then he was gone. The Nazis herded his father onto a train, along with hundreds of other people.

"That was the last time I saw him," he said. "All the Jews in town were taken away. They went to an extermination camp."

Abraham Chapnick is 76 now, a successful businessman who lives with his wife in Howell. But the passage of six decades has not dimmed the memories of his years as a boy in the Buchenwald concentration camp or the pain of his loss. Even now, he cannot sleep the night before a talk about his life during the Holocaust.

And Chapnick will go anywhere, anytime, to tell his story. It is a story that must be told, over and over again.

So the world does not forget.

He spoke with a small group of middle school students at the St. Thomas Christian Academy in Brick Township on March 30. The students are about the same age as Chapnick was when he became one of the "Boys of Buchenwald," the title of a 2004 film.

Chapnick told the students he did not speak about the Holocaust for decades. The world had "deaf ears."

"People did not want to listen," he said. "I did not start speaking again about my life until 1981."

Life on the run

Chapnick's family was on the run from the Nazis for several years before he was taken to Buchenwald. When the food ran out in the hole in the ground, he and his brother foraged in the nearby village and woods. The boys and their mother were eventually "readmitted" into a small ghetto.

One day when he returned from a search for food, he found his little brother in tears. Their mother had been taken away to work in an ammunition factory at a labor camp.

"When we heard about that, we went into hiding," he said. "Into the woods."

The boys slept in barns. They slept wherever they could. The temperatures were often below zero at night.

Eventually, he and Morris ended up on a train, too. The brothers became separated. He never saw his little brother again.

The train stopped at a place called Auschwitz, then started up again.

"The gates were closed," he said. "That was my lucky break."

How did he survive?

"Ninety-nine percent of it was luck," he said. "I was very, very lucky and that's why I survived."

Chapnick was never sick during his years at Buchenwald, despite the terrible conditions.

"I did not have so much as a cold," he said. "Two weeks after liberation I wound up in the hospital with the measles. That would have been a sentence of death if it had happened three or four weeks before."

A harsh life in the camp

The boys from Buchenwald learned a harsh lesson in the concentration camp. They were valued only for their work.

"The minute I couldn't produce, I was dead meat," he said. "I was very lucky to be in the mildest camp. Compared to the others, Buchenwald was a cakewalk."

Their day began at 6 a.m. The guards counted them to make sure no one had escaped. Breakfast was a slice of bread and a bowl of "imitation" coffee, no milk, no sugar. Lunch was a bowl of soup.

"It was mostly water," he said. "Half a dozen pieces of vegetables. If you were lucky you would get a bite of meat. We found out later it was horse meat."

Dinner was another bowl of imitation coffee.

"It was 500 to 600 calories if it was that," he said. "On this you survived."

He became the "best potato stealer" in the world. He wound a piece of wire around the ankle of one of his pants. When he was near the vegetables, he grabbed as many potatoes as he could, then stuffed them into his pants leg.

Chapnick was 14 on April 11, 1945, the day U.S. Gen. George Patton and the 3rd Army marched into Buchenwald. He weighed 65 pounds. To this day, he finds it impossible to leave anything on his plate.

"It was about two weeks before we realized that we were liberated," he said. "After losing all our loved ones, we did not feel like celebrating."

The aftermath

The boys' rescuers did not know how to deal with them either, Chapnick said.

"We knew more than they did and yet we did not know anything," he said.

The boys were sent to an orphanage in France as a safe haven and for their education after they were liberated. But the years of horror had taken their toll.

"I had no emotion whatsoever," he said. "How am I going to live? Where's my family? Is anyone alive? Is there any life beyond this point? What am I going to do? I have no trade, no family. I have nobody in this world."

But soon the emotional numbness Chapnick and the other boys experienced vanished. It was replaced with rage. The boys often trashed the school they were housed in. They had food fights and fistfights. Anger poured out of them.

"Hitler was trying to make animals out of us and he almost succeeded," Chapnick said.

Pulitzer Prize-winner Elie Wiesel was also a boy at Buchenwald. The world thought of the boys as "damaged goods" because of their experiences, he said in the film Chapnick showed to the students before his talk.

"We were angry at the world," Chapnick said. "We were told point-blank by the minister of health in France we would not live to see our 40th birthdays."

He spent several years at the orphanage. It was time to leave. Chapnick knew his father's brother lived in New York. He put Europe behind him and left for the United States. Chapnick's mother, who had survived the labor camp, also relocated and lived with him for several years before he married his wife, Helene.

At first, he balked at having children.

"I did not feel the world was nice enough to accept children," he said. "To accept me."

But several years later he and his wife had a son, Michael. They now have three grandchildren.

"He's a little more ambitious," Chapnick joked. "He has three kids."

But he left the students a somber message.

"The liberties and the democracy of the United States is second to none," he said. "We sometimes take it for granted. Don't ever let anyone take that away from you. You are the future congressmen, senators, maybe even president. Remember once upon a time there was a Holocaust. There are still people out there dying in other countries."

The church's pastor walked over to Chapnick shortly after he finished his talk and shook his hand.

"It's been an honor to meet you," he said. "We need to have you here. God bless you."

"I have a solemn duty," Chapnick said. "It's important to keep telling this story."