A Survivor's Story

t had been 55 years since David Bergman
saw the stone mountain near the Plaszow
concentration camp, off in the distance,
past the cemetery.
He remembers the 12 weeks he was imprisoned
there as a 12-year-old slave laborer, hauling heavy
rocks from the mountain to build a foundation
wall for some barracks a mile away. He remem-
bers being forced to carry the rock above his
head as he walked.

Now, after a ceremony by the Plaszow monument, a guide pointed
to where the wall might be, and Bergman headed towards it. He was
trailed by 60 students and their adult guides from the Detroit area,
participants in the Detroit Unity Mission/International March of
the Living, an annual event meant to keep alive the reality of the
Shoah and its aftermath.
"As I walked, I explained to them where we were going,"
Bergman said in an interview last week. 'After I had a good cry
during the ceremony, I was able to compose myself again."
Plaszow was the first stop of the 1999 march, and the cere-
mony there was the most emotionally intense part of the trip,
according to Bergman's elder son, Rabbi Aaron Bergman of
Congregation Beth Abraham Hillel Moses.
After saying Kaddish at the monument, some of the stu-
dents read poems.
"Then we had my father say a few words," said Rabbi
Bergman, a March guide. "He talked about being there.
When he said, 'This is the place where I said goodbye to
my father,' there was just silence.
"I started reading the memorial prayer and I got
about halfway through it and I was crying," the rabbi
said. "My father was crying and my brother, then
everyone. It was a very emotional moment."
Laurence Bergman, David's younger son who also
served as a guide, said, "You could see his mind
reliving some of the events. This actually did hap-
pen. It wasn't some kind of a nightmare or movie.
"Everything was a movie growing up — film
strips and heroic events that seemed unimagin-
able," Laurence Bergman said. "But it was
extremely disturbing to have a tangible refer-
ence point."
Rabbi Bergman said, "My father's always

A survivor
returns to
the Polish
concentration
camp where
he last saw his
parents, his
sister and his
brother 55
ago.

5/7
1999

HARRY KIRSBAUM StaffWriter

DAN LIPPITT Photographer

been open about talking about it, but there was just
something about being there with him. A deepening of
understanding and a connection of the stories with the
place was just powerful."

`Thrust Into Hell

Born in 1931 as the middle child of a devoutly religious
family, David Bergman lived in Boczkow, Czechoslovakia.
"I had a very Orthodox upbringing," he said. "Prayers
twice a day, keep kosher, obey all the
Ten Commandments, put your faith
in God. Then all of a sudden, from a
happy home life and preparing for my
bar mitzvah, it's like physically being
taken out and thrust into hell."
In March 1944, the Hungarian
Gestapo put a seal on the door and
sent the family to a processing camp
A brick from
in Hungary. A few weeks later they
the Birkenau
were shipped by train to Auschwitz,
gas chamber.
where he was separated from his fami-
ly as they stepped off the train.
"I never saw my mother, sister or brother again,"
David said. "When I entered Auschwitz, the belief in
God faded into the background. It wasn't, 'God, why is
this happening?' It's just that this voice, this force of sur-
vival, took over." He wrestles with the idea that the voice
came from either his own being or from God.
Standing in a children's line, Bergman sensed danger.
Waiting until the guard had his back turned, he ran into
the adults' line and found his father.
When faced with a guard who asked him what he was
TRIUMPH on page 10

:._\