Doris Martin
It’s not often we get the chance to hear a firsthand account
of World War II from the mouth of a survivor.
Sure, you can read books and interviews or learn from history books or
TV documentaries, but to actually hear a survivor speak about their experiences
in their own words is a far more interesting and emotional experience.
I recently had the pleasure of hearing Doris Martin speak at
the Escondido Library. I had seen her here
in 2009, was incredibly moved by her story and bought a copy of her book, Kiss
Every Step. This time I talked my 16
year old son into attending with me. He
was reluctant but I reminded him that this might be his only chance to hear a
Holocaust survivor speak. I was glad he
agreed to go with me and hoped he would be moved by the experience and receive
the message that intolerance breeds unacceptable cruelty.
Doris is a Polish Holocaust survivor. She is in her eighties now, born the same
year as my own mother, and is very attractive and well dressed. The vulnerability in her voice and her small
stature make me want to run up and give her a big hug. When Doris speaks, the atrocities she experienced
some 70 years ago still make her voice tremble with emotion. She has a thick accent and her English is a
bit broken but she is able to convey her story with powerful clarity. She is still bewildered how Hitler could have
such hatred toward her and her people who had done nothing to him. She cannot fathom how anyone could treat
fellow human beings, including innocent children and babies, so cruelly. She was torn from her family, forced into Auschwitz
and then another labor camp where she was stripped of her clothing and dignity,
beaten, kicked, starved, degraded and humiliated. Her voice echoes the horror of having
witnessed the senseless killing of babies and watching people being marched
into the “showers” where they were exterminated. Her life was spared many times during the
course of the war, for reasons she can’t explain. Her story is unique in that her entire family
survived. It is quite rare for an entire
Jewish family to have survived. All
seven of her family members were separated during the war and survived in different ways, and
amazingly, all seven returned to their family home after the war. They had no contact with each other during
those years and had no idea if their loved ones had survived. The stories of each family member as
described in her book are compelling. It
is hard to imagine surviving or even wanting to survive in such conditions for
a short time, let alone years. Imagine
living in constant fear and dread, starving, cold, and subjected to constant horror,
pain and humiliation.
I was impressed that the library was filled to capacity,
standing room only. People of all ages
came to hear Doris’s story and many were moved to tears as they listened. While Doris feels no hatred toward the German
people, she cannot forgive Hitler for the pain and suffering he caused. She
thinks of him as the devil.
Amazingly, she encounters those who tell her the Holocaust
never happened and she is making it all up.
This must be the ultimate slap in the face; to be a witness and to
suffer such horror, then to be told it never happened. She feels the importance of her speaking is to
teach people that yes, this really did happen, and to encourage tolerance among all people
regardless of race or religion. She held
up pictures of the crematorium, and an amazing photo recently found on the
internet, of a group of women getting off the train at Auschwitz. There in the middle of the group was
Doris. She was standing in a group of
women destined for the “showers” before she was sent to a different labor
camp. Her husband recently discovered
the picture on the internet and she was just as amazed as anyone else to see
herself standing there in Auschwitz at the age of 14.
