How Did Thomas Bruergenthal Survive His Life Through The Holocaust

Thomas Buergenthal: Life Through The Holocaust Only 900,000 out of out of 6,000,000 survived the Holocaust. The Holocaust was, what some people consider to be the worst event in history. The Holocaust was led by a man named Adolf Hitler. Hitler persecuted the Jews from 1933 to 1945. One of the very few survivors of the Holocaust was a man named Thomas Buergenthal. Although Thomas Buergenthal survived, there was a lot more people that died during the Holocaust, and it is our duty to honor and remember them. Thomas Buergenthal was born on May 11, 1934 in a town called Ľubochňa, Slovakia. According to the United States Memorial Holocaust Museum, “Thomas's father had worked as a banker in Germany, and then bought a small hotel in the Slovakian

Once Thomas and his family finally settled in the Nazis took over their town. Finally Thomas and his family tried to escape on a train but it was bombed in Poland. In the years 1940 to 1945 they were taken to a Ghetto in Kliece. Buring the time that they were in the Ghetto The Nazis tried to take Thomas to kill him. His parents pulled him back and then Thomas finally spoke up. He said that he could work in a labor camp and he spoke in German. The soldier was surprised that he spoke in German and after that Thomas was transferred to the labor camp. The Soviet Union forced the Germans to evacuate and they took all of their prisoners with them. People called it the death march. Stragglers were shot so Thomas and a few other boys came up with a plan to stop moving until they got to the end of the line. Then they would race up to the front. They would do this over and over which saved energy. Doing this made Thomas to be one of the only children to survive the death march. The prison camps were awful. According to “Never Again: a History of the Holocaust”, “A million and a half Jewish children were murdered in the Holocaust” (Gilbert 102). Some of the Ghettos had a camp orchestra. According to “The Death Camps”, The Germans postponed the murder of some of the prisoners in order to first inflict some mental anguish using the camp orchestra to do so”

He came to America at the age of seventeen. Thomas Buergenthal got to do something that not many jews got to do after the Holocaust. He got to reunite with his mother. There were very few jews that got to do that. According to the GW Law website, “Professor Buergenthal came to the United States at the age of 17” (Thomas). Thomas Buergenthal had a few different occupations in america including, being the author/co-author of over a dozen books, being the honorary president of the american society of international law. He also was the recipient of many different prizes and awards. To this day Thomas Buergenthal is 77 years old and retired. Although that the Holocaust is over, that does not mean that people who survived it still dread what they had to go through. According to TheJC.com, Thomas Buergenthal has a hard time too, “It's strange because I can't go to movies about the Holocaust or watch television programmes”