Doris Martin

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.