Bernard Scheer Tells his Story of Survival

I found out through my Religions class that the College of Science and Humanitites was holding an event where a survivor of the Holocaust would be speaking out against Genocide and telling the audience his story of survival and the things he learned about the world and himself after the Holocaust. I'm a huge WWII buff, due to some family connections to the war, war effort and the Holocaust; needless to say, I would definetly be attending this event.

Upon arriving at the event, I saw some elderly people and wondered who among them was Bernard Scheer. Eventually, Mr. Scheer walked up to the podium and began speaking. He gave us some background information about him and his family and how he thought it was his duty as a survivor of the Holocaust to not remain silent about the horrors he had seen and experienced and to pass his story onto the leaders of tomorrow's world.

He told us about how he had escaped the ghetto, with the help of 2 Gestapo officers. This fact truly shocked me! A Gestapo's officer's job was to capture and torture and kill Jews! NOT save them or help them escape. He later told us about how he had hid his mother and was later captured and sent to a camp in Southern Germany. He told us about how he was liberated by the American's and how he had walked all the way back to Poland with his friend through Russian and German lines to find out if his mother had survived the War and the Holocaust.

Eventually, he and his mother moved to America to be with what little of there family had survived the war; they felt they were no longer welcome and that their home would never be the same in Poland.

He told us how he knew we could never understand what happended to him and to the others because we were not there and how America was the best country in the world (he told us to trust him because he had tried the others).

And so his, his story ended. I must say this was one of the greatest and most moving speeched I had heard in a long time! Hands down, this is something I will remeber for the rest of my life.