Andrew Guckes | Staff Writer
Dr. Al Munzer, a Holocaust survivor, will speak in Wilmington, Delaware, on Sept. 14 at a free event at the Siegel Jewish Community Center, sponsored by the Jewish Federation of Delaware.
His story is one of heroism and resilience, and it’s also about how people of different backgrounds can support each other in times of despair.
Munzer said that he hopes his message is imparted to a multicultural audience, not just one of Jews, as right now the Jewish community needs all the support it can get. If Munzer’s story is anything, it’s a “lesson of what hate can do — my main premise [is that] hate is what started the Holocaust. It wasn’t bullets, it was hate, it was words, and that’s a message that I really want to impress,” he said.
Munzer is from the Netherlands, and when the Nazis invaded the country in 1940, a young Munzer’s family was threatened. His family placed him with a family across the street who was willing to shelter Munzer despite the danger of the Nazis finding out. That family was comprised of Muslims who were Indonesian-Dutch.
“I became a part of the family,” Munzer said.
After he was reunited with his mother before his fourth birthday, Munzer learned more about his family — the rest of whom were killed in Auschwitz.
“Gradually, I came to understand my sisters with photographs on the wall,” he said.
“[People] told me that they did not come back. That was the euphemism used at the time, and very gradually, I came to understand they had been killed.”
Since Munzer was so young, the horrors of the Holocaust were nothing more than his standard reality.
“I grew up with the Holocaust all around me and the effect of the Holocaust. It was really nothing unusual. Many of my playmates had lost parents or had been in hiding. Frankly, we never really talked about it; it was just sort of a given,” he said.
Munzer said that he learned more about what had happened to his father, two sisters and so many others by listening to conversations between adults, especially when his mother would meet with someone who had been imprisoned with her. It was only then that he understood exactly what had occurred to his community.
The events of the mid-to-late 1930s and early 1940s were traumatic for Munzer. So, why then does he choose to spend his time repeating them and talking about them over and over? He said he has no choice.
“The resurgence of antisemitism and other forms of hate is pretty disheartening, but I keep at it with other survivor volunteers. Just seeing young faces really listening hard and asking good questions is very, very gratifying,” Munzer said. “That’s basically why I keep doing it.”
It’s been harder for Munzer since his hearing started to go, but the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum has helped him and other survivors get the equipment and help they need so they can keep telling their stories.
The event featuring Munzer, a member of the Washington, D.C., Jewish community, begins at 2 p.m. and is open to the public at no charge. In addition to being a survivor, Munzer is the former president of the American Lung Association, an accomplished pulmonologist and U.S. Air Force veteran. The event will also be streamed for those who cannot make it in person.
Munzer thinks back to the Indonesian-Dutch family that helped him survive the war and remembers their bravery in doing something that they could have easily opted not to do.
“I want people to remember that regardless of what our differences may be at the moment — profound differences, political differences, whatever — underneath it all we remember that we are all members of one human family,” he said.