Holocaust survivor's death reminds us that we must keep teaching those awful events
Julius Eisenstein Credit: Courtesy Fredrick Eisenstein
Julius Eisenstein, the Long Island baker who died at the age of 102 and whose obituary was printed in Sunday's Newsday, spent decades telling his story.
Now we must continue to tell it for him.
Born in 1919, Eisenstein grew up in Poland, one of four children, the son of a baker.
Just as he was about to turn 20, the Nazis invaded Poland. Most of Eisenstein's family, including his parents and two sisters, died in the Holocaust.
But Eisenstein survived.
He survived when the Nazis rounded everyone up in town and thrust them into a ghetto. He survived as the ghetto was liquidated, when the Nazis forced him and his family to begin a march away from the city they knew. He survived when the SS soldiers pulled him and other young men out of line, a frantic moment that marked the last time he saw his parents, only for the Nazis to force him to go apartment by apartment to remove the dead bodies of fellow Jews — the elderly, pregnant or sickly who were shot and killed before they could escape. He survived multiple concentration camps, as a soldier knocked his teeth out, as his body grew gaunt, and finally, as Dachau was liberated in 1945.
For years after the war, living first in Munich and later in New York, Eisenstein was reluctant to share his story. He opened bakeries on Long Island and eventually settled in Old Westbury. But it wasn't until he met one of his liberators — in Newsday's lobby — that he started to talk about his experience, to teach others.
Survivors in Allach, a sub-camp of Dachau, Germany, greet arriving U.S. troops on April 30, 1945. Eisenstein appears center right in dark clothes surrounded by men in striped uniforms. Credit: United States Holocaust Memorial/Sidney Blau
And teach he did. He spoke at schools across the region and then in Florida, where he moved after retirement.
"I am talking to you because it is my duty to tell you," Eisenstein told students in a speech immortalized on video. "You are the last generation who is listening to a live Holocaust survivor. Another few years from now, there will be nobody around."
Indeed, as fewer survivors are left to describe the horrors they witnessed, their voices and emotions and personal recollections of pain and cruelty will fade, replaced by a less palpable historical account. The harrowing experiences of survivors like Eisenstein highlight the importance of Holocaust education and the significance of a bill percolating in the State Legislature that calls for an analysis of whether schools are following state requirements on teaching the Holocaust.
"I am warning you," Eisenstein said. "People like me are not going to be here much longer. It's in your hands. Be good to each other. Don't hate each other. Love each other."
His beautifully simplistic words resonate particularly now, when other Holocaust survivors are fleeing a new horror in Ukraine, when images of bodies buried in ditches, execution-style killings, and other atrocities are hauntingly familiar.
"I have one aim, one message for you," he said. "That you should not be bystanders. You should speak out if you see something happen to that next guy, that next lady, whether she is white or Black or green or blue. You should speak out. I would not like to have that happen again. It's up to you to do this."
It's up to you, he said. Now, Eisenstein is gone. We've lost his voice, but we still have our own. Now, it's up to us.
Columnist Randi F. Marshall's opinions are her own.
Randi Marshall is a member of the Newsday editorial board.
