Stories of survival: La Jolla Library hosts man who lived through the Holocaust

Though he was a young child during the Holocaust, Gerald Szames recalls some intense details.

He remembers being 4 years old and watching his father leave on a train, never to return.

He remembers the hiding places where he and his family stayed to survive, including under a kitchen and in a forest.

He remembers “crying a lot.”

Szames shared those experiences from World War II and the lessons he learned from them as he spoke at the La Jolla/Riford Library on Sept. 9 as part of the library’s exhibit “Remember Us the Holocaust,” or “RUTH.”

“In 1941, the Germans invaded our town [in Poland],” he said, prompting his family to go into hiding. “We were in a hiding place under the kitchen that my mother had excavated so we could hide there when the Germans came. She knew what was coming.”

Szames, his mother, brother, sister and a rabbi and his five children all hid there until Szames and his family were to move to another location with another family.

“My sister and I were blond, so they were willing to take us in, but they wouldn’t take my brother because he looked [Jewish] so they were scared,” Szames said.

Ultimately, the four family members stayed together and went from location to location until a soldier told them to go to a ghetto.

The fencing in the ghetto was not locked, Szames said, but “the lock was the fear of getting shot.”

Soon, plans took shape to escape through nearby woods with his grandfather, who was living in a house in the same ghetto.

The family would move to a new safehouse every two weeks, trading what they could for food and shelter until the war ended in 1945. At one point they used a Nazi helmet to cook food or collect water.

“My grandfather and my mother saved my life,” Szames said. “That’s why I’m a survivor now.”

Szames went on to college and started a business selling produce. His mother remarried and had two more children, so he also helped take care of his younger sisters.

Szames’ likeness and story are part of the RUTH exhibition, which opened in January and includes life-size cutouts and keepsakes of San Diego County survivors of the Nazi extermination campaign against European Jews. When it opened, curator Sandra Scheller said she intended to bring in Holocaust survivors and other speakers. The exhibit continues through June 28.

Behind the scenes, RUTH also is working to expand its collection with a rare item currently located in Poland. After raising $85,000 in donations, organizers are roughly $40,000 from doing so.

The item is a concentration camp uniform belonging to a gay survivor, accompanied by a photo of him donning the clothes and a certificate of castration. The artifact is from the family of Heinrich Mueller and is considered very rare.

Scheller said she broke down and cried when she saw the item in Poland this year. In May, she launched a GoFundMe campaign to add it to the RUTH collection.

A group of donors, including one who contributed $75,000, covered a large chunk of the cost. Learn more at gofundme.com/f/help-rememberustheholocaust.

“With the [Jewish] High Holidays approaching, we invite you to consider donating the equivalent of what you might spend on a holiday meal,” an email from RUTH says. “Every contribution, no matter the size, brings us closer to preserving this extraordinary piece of history.”

— La Jolla Light staff writer Noah Lyons contributed to this report.