New York Today: A Holocaust Survivor’s Story, on Stage

In advance of the approaching Russian troops, the Nazis forced all those inmates still strong enough to march- out of the camp. That March is better known as The " Death March" continued on for months, Mr Kimmelstiel like thousands of others, was forced to "march" in the bitter cold in wooden shoes, through snow and freezing temperatures out of Auschwitz. The conditions were beyond brutal. They were not liberated until early May in 1945 ( they were in Germany by this time) when their Nazi guards finally fled upon the arrival of US troops.

Mr. Kimmelstiel indeed left Auschwitz, January 18 prior to the liberation by the Russians. The Nazis sensing the approach of Allied troops emptied the camps of all "able" bodied souls in advance of the Russians. Mr
Kimmelstiel, along with thousands of other concentration camp inmates was forced to march through the freezing and bitter cold wearing primitive wooden shoes. Many, many died on this "Death March". Those that survived were finally liberated in early May. Mr Kimmelstiel and the other survivors endured continuous unspeakable conditions for more than 3.5 months trekking across Poland and Germany until they were liberated by the Americans in Germany. Many of their captors fled and removed their uniforms to escape the American forces.

If by "Allied troops" you mean the Russians. I find your description of "sensing" somewhat strange. Perhaps they "sensed" the artillery shells that were falling near them. I have found no evidence that any of the western allied armies went into Poland after the Russians. I don't know where you get this information that the Auschwitz prisoners travelled for three and a half months or that they were taken into Germany. The prisoners were, in effect, witnesses who could reveal the "secret" of the Holocaust, which the Nazis were quite eager to avoid. And they were marched to a town in Poland near the Czech border, which is a rather strange route to take if their destination was Germany.

You do cause offense. There's a big difference between dropping a single bomb and a years-long plan to create a system of factories (and social systems feeding into them) designed to eliminate an entire race, after stealing their worldly goods and possessions, enslaving them, raping them, using their bodies for medical experiments, torturing them for sport, pulling out their teeth for gold, gassing them, and and using their skin for lampshades. That you can't tell the difference is one reason why we need more to hear more stories like the one recounted here.

@AnnNYC
If I cause "offense", it's only because you don't have an open mind to seeing human suffering everywhere.
That's why these terrible and horrible things will continue to repeat themselves.
Do you thik what Blacks went through here in America was much different?? -- and it's still going on!
Just for the record. I'm half-German and I know what happenened.
I also know Jews aren't the only ones who have suffered in this world.
And everything that happens like this, is the crime against humanity.
Pray for us all.

Nonsense, N. Smith.

There is a big difference between setting out to annihilate every Jew in Europe -- men, women, and children who had done no harm -- and dropping a bomb on a Japanese island in the course of a war.

For that matter, ask the Chinese how innocent the Japanese were, and what massacres feel like.

In the course of all human history, and let's count the 1.5-million Armenians, there has never been a systematic extermination of a people totaling over 6 million.

If you'd like, you can count the extra 5-million gay people, Communists, anti-Nazi activists, and mentally deficient in that count.

I suppose you are counting the Palestinians who get caught when their brave terrorist warriors take shelter, and shelter their weapons, in schools and hospitals after launching missile attacks into Israel and then cry foul when the Israelis retaliate. Pretty ridiculous.

They were forced to leave Germany when Hitler came to power in 1933 and moved to France.

The family fled Germany and went to France when Hitler came to power in 1933.

In America, more people believe in ghosts than in the laws of gravity. With that kind of population, it's no wonder that we're in the mess we're in.

And now that the last of our World War Two veterans are dying out, there will be no one to say, "My platoon went into the camps. It was my job to bulldoze emaciated, rotten bodies into mass graves and cover them over with soil."

Something my uncle, long gone, did, and talked about only rarely.

As for the old black-and-white footage, people will say it's photo-shopped.

God help us.

Unfortunately, such groups like that do exist. As an Israeli-born Jew, I do feel offended when anyone claims that the Holocaust was nothing more than a hoax despite the fact that it happened, plus making the claim that it was just to promote a Jewish state by the Zionists. Even worse, there are anti-Israel activists who even try to claim that what the Palestinians are living is like the concentration camps when such claims have been found to baseless on that. Seriously, were the Jews doing terrorist attacks before the Nazis made them live in those camps let alone launch rockets and other projectiles from them? If anyone believes that, then there probably is something wrong with them. For the record, the Jews never called for the ethnic cleansing of any groups yet so many had called for the ethnic cleansing of them even in this day, which shows how anti-Semitism still lives.

Hopefully the program will be posted somewhere (perhaps You Tube) for those unable to attend.

I always wonder why the other 44Million dead of WWII aren't remembered. Don't they matter. Why not bring their fate to the stage? The Warsaw citizen killed by a Stuka bomb, the Russian peasant woman killed for the purpose to take her livestock away for an opulent dinner. All these people in Leningrad slowly being starved to death. Apparently they don't play a role in history.

Sometimes I get the strange feeling that for New Yorkers this all is just "collateral damage".

Why is it whenever there is a Holocaust story there is always someone who comments about the lack of news about the others who died? Of course their lives mattered. There are monuments, cemeteries and memorials to the WW2 dead all over the world. But those who raise the question are denying the facts of the Final Solution. The only time in history that a government planned and orchestrated the anihilation of an entire group of people. And frankly they were quite successful wiping out an entire culture in Europe and shortly following in the Middle Eastern countries. Nations where Jews lived for thousands of years. So when I inevitably see that question I can't help but feel that bias is the reason. Anti-Semitism is alive and well in our world and raising its ugly head far too often.

Well done, Freddie.

Thanks as always, Freddie.

hope your day goes well