The University of Maryland’s Hillel
In 1941, the United States entered World War II, and in that same year, Mark Strauss’s life changed forever, as his home country of Poland came under increasing Nazi domination.
The United States was a signal of hope, Strauss said, a sign of an eventual liberation for Strauss and the Jewish people. But it was not immediate.
“We were happy — happy, although most of us were murdered already,” Strauss said.
Strauss, who was 11 years old when the U.S. entered the war, spoke at Hillel on Thursday evening about his experiences during the war and shared his stories of survival, hardship and death during the war.
He remembers a jubilant affair when he learned of American intervention. About 40 or so of his neighbors brought what little they had to celebrate, and bottles of cognac and vodka helped to lift everyone’s spirits.
“Why were we happy? Because America is going to win the war in a matter of weeks, definitely months,” said Strauss, speaking to a crowd of about 75 people. “And we’ll be free. That’s why were happy. Everybody.”
But the war did not end until 1945, and the Soviet Union liberated Poland a short time before the war in Europe ended.
About a half million residents lived in Strauss’s hometown. Of the town’s population of Ukrainians and Poles, among others, about 100,000 people were Jewish, he said.
And of those 100,000 Jewish residents, about 85,000 of them died in executions.
At a mass grave near a local ravine, victims were gunned down and buried — some still alive — and the noise of the dying still echo in Strauss’s head.
“Friends tell me, the whole day, they had to still hide in that tomb near the mass grave,” he said. “There were screams, yells, moans and groans coming from the mass grave of those who were dying slowly out of suffocation or loss of blood.”
Eventually, Strauss ended up in a Jewish ghetto, where he described the living conditions as grotesque.
“Downtown, old town. No greenery, everything is either tile or concrete,” he said. “No place to dig a hole in the ground, so people started relieving themselves all over.”
But with the help of a Christian woman, Strauss eventually escaped. He moved to New York at age 16 in 1947, and he earned a bachelor’s degree in physical chemistry. He has worked at MIT, the Franklin Institute and the federal government. He also is a painter, and he sold works of his print after the talk at Hillel.
“I just like hearing stories from Holocaust survivors,” said Marshall Noye, a freshman architecture major, who went on a trip to Poland and Israel earlier this year.
Lindsay Goldman, the Jewish experience associate at Hillel, helped bring Strauss to the campus to share his story.
“I thought it was really important for students to hear it, and for non-Jews who may not have had access, like I had growing up, to hear this story,” Goldman said.
