Latest / Rick Outzen: (we don’t) color on the dog / My Family's Holocaust
Transcript
- speaker-0: Welcome back. I'm Rick Altson. This is Rick's Blog Live. my editor this week, when we came out with this issue, she said, Rick, I never thought I would see in 2026 a story about the KKK and Holocaust, and someone denying the Holocaust in the same issue. Well, we have it in this week's issue. it is it's it it began at a school board discussion about a historical fiction novel called The Devil's Arithmetic, where a young girl is thrown back into pre-World War II Poland. into the and it it's a fascinating book that really grabs middle school and high school students, which is the purpose of it. And but in looking at that and and looking at the story that we wrote about someone denying the Holocaust or calling it propaganda or inaccurate, I wanted to go to someone who has a very personal story about it. And the person I've interviewed him before, you know him as being sportscaster for Channel Three. He's worked with the Studer Institute. He's also now he's with Ascension Sacred Heart, Steve Neesom. Steve, thank you. speaker-1: Thirty rare. speaker-0: This is th you have a very personal story about the Holocaust. You've lost family members. speaker-1: yeah, a lot. Well, my dad was a Holocaust survivor. he grew up in in Greece in the city of Salonika, Thessaloniki, which is the second largest city in Greece. And at the time there was a very large Jewish population there. This nineteen forty one, there was like fifty six thousand Jews in the city. And he was thirteen years old when the Germans entered Greece and word came that they w they were gonna reach Salonica soon. And even though he was he came from a you know a big family, Dad owned a restaurant successful. The you see the family right there. he had four brothers and a and a little sister. That's my dad on the lower left. This was taking just a few months before the Germans arrived. And when the word came that they were they were gonna be there soon, my dad, he was thirteen, but he was a very headstrong kid and he listened to the news. He knew the Germans hated Jews and they they treated him mean and they put him to work and he's like, Well they're not gonna treat me mean. They're not gonna put me to work. I'm gonna get out of here before they arrive. So he was determined just to leave town before they got there. He knew his parents would never let him do it, that it was a crazy idea. So he did not tell them and he just you know, he tried to get somebody to go with him. If that didn't work, so he just took off on his own. He literally snuck onto a ship going to Athens. Like he g jumped on a rope and climbed on the on there. He was that desperate to get out. So a few days after he did that, the Germans arrived and took over Salonika. So he went to Athens and he just found a way, like he got help from adults or he got help from military people, he just found a way to finagle his way in. So from Athens the Germans were heading that way. He got out there again a few days before they arrived, went to Crete. And then in Crete again, when the Germans were gonna start heading that way, he got out of like a few days before and literally he got on a British convoy, military convoy like half an hour before he got on the ship, half hour before they left. And then shortly after that the Germans arrived and started attacking and and took over Crete. He went to Cairo, Egypt. So this is three, four months now, as a 13-year-old on the run. Well and he's in Egypt. And at that time, he he found a way to be housed by the British military. He just finagled his way in there. And there was a large Jewish population. He went to to meet them and told them his story. I'm on the run, I'm 13. They were like amazed by it. And they said, Do your parents know you're alive or anything? And he goes, No. So they said, We gotta get him a telegram. So they said they arranged for him to send a telegram to his dad's restaurant. At that time the Germans took over, but they had not yet started persecuting. So the telegram got through and he found out later that his dad gave everybody free food and drinks when he found out his son was alive and where he was. And they sent a letter back saying that we love you and embraced you. And my dad said he pre broke down and cried at that point because it really hit home what he had done. So he was in Egypt for a while and and he got help from a lot of people and eventually he went all the way when the Germans were coming there, he went to Kenya at one point, he went to Belgium, Congo, he went all the way to South Africa, which is long way from Greece over over a multi year period and rode out the war different ways, getting favors, you know, doing what he had to do to get by. Eventually, you know, the war ends, the Germans lose, so he ends up getting to go back to Greece, you know, it's four and a half years after he fled. So he left, he was thirteen, he got back, he was like seventeen, eighteen. And that's when we found out what happened to his family. So the Germans, even though they didn't persecute right away, before long they did persecute, they took away homes and businesses made them live in deplorable conditions in in a ghetto. His older brother Albert, he escaped at one point and he fought with the resistance in the mountains and he was there. He had survived. but the rest of the family, two years after the Germans took over, they had their plans in place to deport all the Jews of Salonika to Auschwitz. And in in nineteen forty three over a several month period they put I mean we've all seen the images in cattle cars and horrible conditions you can't even imagine for a weeks long journey to Auschwitz. And so all of the rest of his family members were taken to Auschwitz. He found out that when you get there they either send you to the work camp or to the showers and he found that his mom, his dad, and his little sister who was like six years old all went to the showers, which of course was poison gas. Right. And they were murdered and then burned. He found out that his two older brothers, his three brothers were sent to the work camp. Two of them were ended up being shot at one point, his older brothers, his youth his younger brother was seen almost before liberation, but then wasn't seen again. And out of his whole extended family, aunts, uncles, cousins, he had one cousin that got back alive from Auschwitz. That's how he knew some of these details. And out of the fifty six thousand Jews that were in Salonica, less than two thousand survived. Well and almost all of them were murdered at Auschwitz. But my dad was one of those two thousand that found a way to survive, but obviously a a horrific and and traumatic you know event for our family. speaker-0: when you you know, and I know you've encapsulated a huge story and you know, the when you speak to community groups and to students, we had Keith Leonard, superintendent of schools, in here a few minutes ago and he just you know, in between the break you just was talking about how, you know, what a fine person you are and how he you know, it you know, what you've done in helping teach kids in the school system. about your family's history and the Holocaust. What are the questions that you get when you when you start talking? speaker-1: Well, I think one of was, well, why didn't they fight back? That was one one question. And I think as a as a community, they decided, you know, other communities did different, but they they decided, well let's just try to go along. It can't be that bad. They can't you know, they can't be that much of a of a monster, but they can and they were. So that that's part of it. They also you wonder, you know, how did my dad have the have the nerve to do what he did, and I I've done the talk, it's been a number of years, but I did it in middle schools for for a bunch of years. The kids were thirteen years old. So I'm put it put put this in your shoes. Would you do the same thing at thirteen? Could you do I couldn't have done it. and my dad's not a hero. He was not really he was actually not a great person and all the this trauma he had a lot of guilt and anger and all that stuff. But he was smart and he and brave, you know. So I I get a lot of questions about that too and also just about Well, the hatred that caused this to happen. Why? Why did that happen? Why why was there this hatred? And and you how do you deal with that? speaker-0: Yeah, we we've the book The Devil's Arithmetic was questioned. S there was a member of the public that saw it as propaganda and not true. how do you r s as a son of a survivor, have family members who perished in Auschwitz, how do you respond to something like that? speaker-1: It it's painful. It's painful and it's it's almost like you're trying to create the Holocaust again by denying it. these were people that were murdered just for being Jewish and there is heavy documentation of it. I mean, my dad was interviewed by the Show Foundation with Steven Spielberg's organization. They have thousands of interviews. There's there's records, you know, the Germans kept great records on it as well. so that's just pure hatred. To to be able to do that, that means that's anti Semitism. It's you're trying to, you know promote an agenda. So it's it's really hurtful. It's disrespectful to people that have suffered greatly to to say that. And to me they're just fueling some kind of agenda. I don't even know if they really believe that or not because it's insane or maybe they've convinced themselves of that. but you know it's thinking like that. That's what allowed the Holocaust to happen in the first place. Because there was a lot of you know German w Germany was a progressive society for many years, but hatred took over. Too many people bought into it. Too many people did not stand up against it. And then you got what you got 'cause people are capable of horrific things and that's what the Holocaust was. speaker-0: it's it it's scapegoating to create somebody to be the scapegoat of what the what the issues are. Gosh we're we're we've gone through this so f so fast. if if there was anything you wish people to know about your family's story, what would what would that what what would that be? speaker-1: Well, there were so many lives not lived because of what happened of being murdered. And it's not just the people that were murdered, it was the generations afterward. I have so few relatives on my dad's side because there's there's not there's nobody there to have it. So so many lives were impacted for generations to come. So many people that could have been great people or contributed to society, that's all gone because of hatred and mindless, unnecessary hatred. And you know, I I never got a chance to meet my peop my my friends and you know, even but but, you know, because my dad survived, you know, we won. We did beat that. You know, he he had a lot of heartache and guilt and anger, but I have life because he survived and then my children have life, you know, because he survived. So we we persevered. But so much is lost because of hatred and is it's it's it's not needed and people need to stand up when they see something like this happening. speaker-0: Steve, thank you so much for coming on and sharing. it's the it's we gotta keep telling the story. speaker-1: Yes, 'cause always there's so few still alive survivors. So we gotta keep finding a way to tell the story. speaker-0: All right, we're gonna go ahead and break. golly, I've I've gotta this was this was a heavy segment, but one that was very important. We'll we'll be right back.