by elizabeth farina, Midlothian Exchange.com

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Related Links:  Video Teacher of tolerance

City in Germany Honors local Holocaust survivor

When Midlothian resident Susie Levin came home from a tour of the Virginia Holocaust Museum, she insisted that her husband Don, an author, call Holocaust survivor Alex Lebenstein, the man who had conducted the lengthy tour. When Lebenstein saw the picture of Levin’s great aunt who perished at Auschwitz, he knew Levin had a comprehension of the Nazi Germany horrors and would be capable of capturing the 81-year-old’s verbal legacy in tangible form. After nearly two years of interviews with Lebenstein, Levin has penned Lebenstein’s life story. It is a powerful message of one man dedicated to teaching tolerance to school children here and in Germany. The Gazebo, by Alex Lebenstein as told to and edited by Don Levin is released by Authorhouse®, on Thursday, Dec. 4.

“I decided this was a story that needed to be told, not just because he was a survivor,” Levin said, “but because of what he is doing now in teaching kids about tolerance and his experience with his hometown in Germany.”

It is a message of tolerance that Lebenstein delivers again and again to schools without charging a fee for his presentation. “Ever since I started talking about it, I have a better life. It got rid of my hate, and probably saved me,” Lebenstein said. “Most of my adult life was dominated by the hatred inside of me, and it almost killed me.”

Lebenstein, who was 11 when the Nazis incarcerated him and his parents, is a well-known speaker in Virginia’s schools. The sole surviving member of the Jewish community of Haltern-am-See, Lebenstein clarified how the Nazi regime revoked occupational licenses and medals of World War I veterans, making it difficult for his father to support a household of five. His older sisters worked as maids in the late 30’s after Hitler declared that non-Jews were not allowed to work in Jewish homes. The sisters were able flee to England with their wealthy employers, taking a few family heirlooms and family pictures that are published in The Gazebo. 

His riveting life story and candid truths of hatred and transformation have captivated thousands of high school and middle school students. It has sparked numerous discussions about prejudice and indifference. Most area high school students will identify with Lebenstein’s account of Kristallnacht, the Night of Broken Glass. He shares memories of the night of November 10, 1938, when the Nazis destroyed his family’s home and possessions, forcing the Lebensteins to flee for their lives. After three days in hiding, the family was eventually sent to a local Jewish ghetto for three years. They then endured a six day transport in a cattle car which took them to the larger Ghetto in Riga, Latvia. Lebenstein watched his father die from tetanus during this time. During one of Alex’s work assignment absences, his mother was murdered in the forests outside Riga and buried in a mass grave.

Levin continues Lebenstein’s story as the then 14-year-old moved to the concentration camps of Kaiserwald and Stutthof and the slave labor camps of Hasenpot and Burggraben.. This year, Lebenstein returned to the place where his mother was gunned down at Bikernieki, a forest near Riga, Latvia. “The train still runs right past the forest,” Lebenstein said. “Back then, they put an extra rail to go right into the forest.”

Lebenstein still carries the emotional pain from his visit in May. “The cattle cars would pull in and they [the Nazis] chased them out, made them dig their own graves, get undressed, and then they machine gunned them to death,” he said.

“As I walked among the graves, I remember hearing the birds singing. I was there for awhile, and the birds’ singing turned into machine gun fire especially when the railroad [train] went by,” Lebenstein added. Much to his disappointment, he was unable to find his mother’s grave at the mass murder site. Even with the pain, he still seeks to teach children about tolerance in his modern-day presentations.   

Lebenstein eventually was placed in a concentration camp. He usually does not dwell on the horrors of the concentration camps in his school presentation. He only adds his near-death experience from typhus before being liberated. Most students will never forget his interactive fast forward from the camps to fifty years later, where he is building a relationship with the students in Germany.

“Alex came here in ’47 with absolutely no desire to have anything to do with Germany,” Levin said.  In the mid 1970s, Lebenstein’s son introduced him to another Holocaust survivor who was in the same ghetto and camp. The older survivor had maintained ties with his German roots and in the 1980’s saw an ad from the International Red Cross which was searching for Lebenstein. At first, the anger from the horrors he endured during his teenage years caused Alex to lash out. “True to form, Alex said, ‘Go to hell.’ But for five or six years, they kept contacting him through his friend, Ernie,” Levin said.

In 1994, Haltern-am-See opened up the city archives for students to study the Holocaust. “The Nazis were very methodical about documenting everything they did. Two students handwrote letters to Alex because every time they would ask their grandparents questions, their grandparents kept telling them this [Holocaust] was all fiction. It was all made up by the Brits, the Americans, and the Jews,” Levin shared.

Lebenstein was torn in making the decision, but the support of his own children and family helped him return to Germany in 1995 to set the record straight. “Hitler was in power for 12 years. What did he do to Germany ? He destroyed it and destroyed the people,” Lebenstein said. “For all time, it will be written in blood. And these children suffer for that? Is it their fault?  No. The problem is, for me, I did not see it that way for most of my life. I saw it the other way. ‘Kill them all.’ That was the change that took place when I went to Germany for the first time,” Lebenstein said.

The children at the school, which was renamed this year the Alexander Lebenstein Realschule in his honor, asked for his forgiveness. Their persistent actions changed the current of hatred in Lebenstein’s soul to one of tolerance. They have planted an apple tree together in his honor, restored a cattle car that serves as a museum on the school grounds, and have had numerous ceremonies to remember those senselessly killed by the Nazi regime and the national government in Berlin has named him a godfather to the school. In addition, the town has given him the title of Ehrenburger (honored citizen).  He is the first recipient of this award in over fifty years.

Although emotionally draining, seeing students understand and embrace the message of tolerance strengthens Lebenstein’s resolve to continue the presentations at schools across the Commonwealth and in Germany. “Tolerance is the only thing that’s important when I come to a school and see those kids come towards me, it makes it all worthwhile. When I see a Muslim child come to me, and say, ‘I would like you to meet my parents,’ I am happy to do so.  Our religions may be different, but we are brothers.  It is not religion that causes hatred.  It is extremism,” the 81-year-old man emphatically said.  Darfur and other genocides are always tied-in to Lebenstein’s presentations.  He has lived the horror of one genocide; he is completely committed to preventing any more from occurring.  Alex always warns, “If you think it can’t happen here…think again.”

Levin and Lebenstein know that The Gazebo will appeal to a broad audience. “As the work progressed, the title changed,” Levin said. “That the Children Will Know” was a working title for a long time. We just hit on The Gazebo, as a symbol of the contrasts between safety and horror experienced by Alex.” Lebenstein agreed that the title was appropriate. “The Gazebo is more than one thing. In the gazebo, I found happiness. I found laughter. I found food,” Lebenstein said. “Me, the only son, a spoiled rotten momma’s boy, did not have to do anything, but eat.But the gazebo is also where I experienced fear and pain that will never leave me.”

Published in the book is a picture of his parents, older sisters and Alex standing in front of the gazebo in their garden. His father used to plant beans along the trellis’. “The fun thing about the book is that we start off telling a lot of happy anecdotes from when Alex was a child that provides a stark contrast to the horrors that he endured. His mother would make pudding and hide an almond in one of the cups.  Much to the dismay of his sisters, Alex almost always got the almond, which would get him out of his chores,” Levin said.

Compiling Lebenstein’s life story has been a transformation for Levin too. “I’ve been a big fan of the Greatest Generation for a long time. I had two uncles that fought in World War II.  The one that I am named after never came home.  I look at the courage and fortitude – greatness of that generation, and I would include people like Alex in that group.” Levin said. “If this had been merely a survival story, it would have been interesting.  The transformation within Alex since the war makes it touching.  But, the good that he has done in the last 13 years in order to make a difference not only here, but in the lives of the children in Germany, makes it exemplary and powerful. Anyone who reads it will want to make a difference as well.  The story is certainly larger than me, or even Alex; it is a story of hope.” Levin said.

Lebenstein’s memories fill The Gazebo with various recollections of happy times such as imitating his father and his father’s friends playing cards in the gazebo and his mother punishing him for purchasing peanuts on the family’s grocery bill. It also encapsulates the good name of his father, a World War I veteran and honest butcher and livestock handler, being trusted by non-Jewish farmers who smuggled food into the ghetto at the risk of punishment from the Nazis. It outlines the horrors of performing surgery on a friend to lance boils and strip away scabs to get the lice out, and recalling the death of many while surviving on fish heads and potato peels. 

Lebenstein, as a survivor, does not dwell on why he lived and others did not. Levin notes that Lebenstein’s parents were older and he was large for his age.  “He wasn’t immediately separated out for death. Every day, when Alex was called out, he didn’t know if he was going to a work assignment or going to his death. He reached a point where he didn’t care anymore. He became almost like the living dead. When he was standing in the shadows of the chimneys of the crematoria, which were belching out black smoke and delivering grit into his teeth, it almost didn’t matter anymore. Alex told me that all the fear finally left him,” Levin said.

It is a hope that the book, and charitable donations, will help build the Alexander Lebenstein Fund for Tolerance and Human Rights at the Richmond Jewish Foundation to keep programs about tolerance in the forefront of today’s society. “A number of teachers would like to use the book in their classrooms in lieu of Anne Frank. They [the students] know Alex. It’s more real to them,” Levin said.

The book can be purchased for $13.99, plus shipping, through the web site at http://www.thegazebobook.com.  It can also be purchased for $17.99 through Barnes & Noble, Borders, and Amazon.com. “The pricing makes it accessible to the kids,” Levin said. “It is such an important message.”