Henry Laurant is one of the Holocaust survived testimony.
His original name is Hans Werner Levy, and he was born on May 28 1924 in
Koneigsberg, Germany. His father was a doctor for a long time before he was
born. They lived in an apartment because houses were very rare at that time.
His father was an intelligent man, and his mother was a warm, lovely and
friendly woman. On the time anti-Semitic, he recalled that no Jews were allowed
to shop, went outside. After Kristallnacht, new regulation came out along with
many others that no Jews were allowed to practice as a doctor, and no Jewish
lawyers were allowed to practice laws. In school, Jewish teachers were fired,
and class was separated apart into group as Jews and Germans. His parents made
an arrangement so he and his sister would not have to go to a public school. At
the hospital, he knew a Jewish boy pretended to be non-Jewish. One time when he
and his father got home, he cannot forget the expression on his father face
about the hate painting on the house.
After the Olympic game, Hitler had to do something to
impress the popular. So multiplication of the sign put on over the city with
pages anti-Semitic to warn how horrible the Jews were, and how good the Germans
were. As he said, it was Jews hating, Jews bating. Another sign of anti-Semitic
he had suffered is that he and other people were asked to leave a theater
because they are Jews. He got advance warning and went into hiding; thousands
of men were arrested and put in concentration camps. Sense of fear about the
whole things, fear of being harm because he was a haft child, haft man had made
him have to keep very careful eyes when he went out. When his family lived in a
house in Berlin, they were told to make it appeared as nobody was in the house,
and there was a minimum of lights was used. He became a master of discovering
hiding rows, and finding places to get away from the street when there was
danger. His parents tried to get him out of the country, so he went to England
after one month of Kristallnacht. His father took him to the station because
his mother has been ill some weeks ago. A lot of emotional sense of people with
their children at the station, his father talk to him with full of good and
positive advice. The train had some adult Jews take care of them. That was the
last time he saw his family. During the war, his parent tried to do their best
to let him know about the situation. In England, one time he and other Jewish
children were invited to spend Christmas at a school, and he thanks to that
wonderful gift. When the guardianship let him go on his own, he went to a
lady’s home that he meet at the school because he did not have anywhere to go.
His sister was arrested in July and was send to concentration camp. He then got
an information that she worked in a force labor and was arrested by a SS man.
He tries to get all the information about his family from any source he can. He
felt guilt that he had left to the “free-side”, and left his family at the
“hell-side”, possibility to death. There is a certain amount of this guilt that
he knew enough about the situation, but nothing he can do; afterward he did
everything he could to find out what happened. The only kind of guilt is
rational guilt, the complex of feeling.
“Why should I be alive while they are dead!”
“There is a price to pay for one freedom.”
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