Chaim Ferster is not a celebrity in the world of film or music, nor a leading figure in the field of art, but he is a survivor. The 97-year-old man, who is in good health and only stopped working at 92, is a symbol for the world.
Somehow, he defeated the Nazis by escaping all his assassination attempts not once, but eight times.
- Although Chaim Ferster passed what should have been the best years of his youth trying to withstand the horrors of war.
- These experiences did not ruin him emotionally.
- This is probably his greatest triumph.
He did not survive to talk about the pain or misfortune to which he and his family were subjected without choice, but to rebuild their lives without any influence in the shadow of the past.
“We must accept disappointment as something finite, but we must never lose the infinity of hope. ” Martin Luther King
Chaim Ferster is today a kind, grateful and wise man. He has told his story hundreds of times, as he is one of the few prisoners of the surviving Nazi concentration camps who can tell firsthand what happened in these murderous places.
He is also a great-grandfather, had a happy marriage that lasted 65 years and was the founder of a very successful company that brought prosperity to his life.
Chaim Ferster was born on 18 July 1922 in a village called Sosnowiec, Poland, his family was Orthodox Jewish and was part of the community that accounted for about 21% of the population at the time.
Remember that everyone saw with some fear the gradual rise of Nazism in Germany. And they weren’t wrong.
In 1939, the place where he lived was quickly invaded by the Nazis, World War II began and the imposition of anti-Semitism, first the obligation to wear a yellow star in his clothes, then discrimination on the street. and the uncertainty of what was going to happen.
Jewish ghettos soon formed. Chaim Ferster was only 17, but still remembers the fear that dominated that time.
The year 1942 definitely changed his life. His father died of pneumonia, because even in the Jewish ghetto it was not even possible to obtain the most basic medicines. The family has also been affected by severe restrictions on access to food.
That same year, the Gestapo demanded that his mother and sister report to the authorities, no one has heard from it again.
Chaim Ferster and the other Jews understood that when someone was called to the Gestapo, no one would ever know where he was again.
But no one knew much about concentration camps until then, the information circulating was based on rumors and inconsistent information, in this context, however, his uncle gave him wise advice that would still save his life, he recommended that he learn an activity that would be useful to the Germans.
Chaim Ferster then began learning about the mechanics of sewing machines in the ghetto and was a great choice. In 1943, the time came. The Gestapo asked him to show up and then was sent to a concentration camp.
It was a very difficult start. Was it in O’s domains?Wi? Cim, Graditz and Niederorschel. I remember a time when inmates were forced to repair a road at a temperature of 25 degrees below zero.
The Nazis, however, quickly understood his technical knowledge and assigned him less cruel jobs. This was essential for Chaim Ferster to become a survivor years later, but the road was not easy.
In Graditz, he contracted typhus because there was an epidemic, and often mentions a dark image with piles of perfectly organized corpses of the bodies of all who had succumbed to the virus.
It was almost 1945 when Chaim Ferster was transferred to Auschwitz, says he arrived there at midnight, in a terrifying silence, where his skin was tattooed with a code and suffered great deprivation.
However, two months later, he was moved back, this time to Niederorschel, because they needed mechanics, for him it was like moving to a spa.
Due to the advance of the Allies, the Niederorschel camp was closed in 1945 and all prisoners were sent to the dreaded Buchenwald camp, where mass executions are carried out every day.
The Nazis, at this point, already knew they were going to lose the war, but before that happened, they wanted to wipe out as many Jews as possible.
The time has come for his execution. He was queuing for the place where they took place when the Allies took control of the camp and freed all the prisoners. Then came the return to a harsh reality. More than 30 of his relatives had died.
One of his surviving uncles had emigrated to Manchester, where he went and was able to start his life again. Chaim Ferster defeated the Nazis because he was ultimately a survivor and became a happy Jew.