Holocaust still haunts Swampscott survivor

Eric Kahn had already learned an enduring lesson about the dangers of not confronting society?s ills by the time he was freed along with thousands of other European Jews from Nazi concentration camps 70 years ago.?Do not be a bystander. Speak up and make a fuss about it. The Nazis were able to convince the general population they were the saviors and the Jews were the devil,” Kahn said.The 85-year-old Swampscott resident?s childhood veered from attending a neighborhood school in the German city of Wiesbaden to being imprisoned in a concentration camp where Kahn and other children picked and ate dandelions to supplement their meager diet. Kahn only learned after the war ended that most – if not all – of his 14 Jewish boyhood classmates were executed after they were taken by train from Wiesbaden in June 1942 to the gas chambers at the Sobibor concentration camp.Their legacy – and Kahn?s – is part of the Holocaust, the chronicle of the Nazi extermination of Jews still clearly remembered by survivors like Kahn. They have been chronicled by the Center for Holocaust and Genocide Studies at Salem State University, where history professor Christopher Mauriello said recollections on the Holocaust by Kahn and other survivors ring across the decades with power and raw emotion.?There seems to be something that really connects when people hear them. The conveyance of emotion – I think survivors experienced something that is difficult to express in words,” Mauriello said.Kahn said his memories of Nazi persecution are still vivid and horrible. He was seven years old when Nazi authorities closed his local school and forced Jewish children to walk to a “Jewish school” on the city?s outskirts.His father, Max, served in the German army in World War I and worked as a traveling salesman, but by 1938, he was fired by his non-Jewish employer and unable to perform, due to illness, the menial jobs reserved for Jews.?I remember the date, Oct. 1,” Kahn said.Kristallnacht exploded a month later, with Nazis burning temples and destroying Jewish businesses and homes, littering sidewalks with broken glass. Their father and other Jewish men were rounded up and sent to camps, only to be released at the start of 1939 and ordered to leave Germany with their families.The Kahns tried to make arrangements to leave but could not obtain visas. The Nazis classified the family as a “mixed race” household because Kahn?s mother was not raised Jewish but married a Jew. They were largely confined to their home and lived off ration cards similar to ones issued to other German civilians, but without meat allowances or other provisions.As the war escalated, Jewish persecution accelerated into organized deportation and slaughter. Kahn?s classmates and other Wiesbaden Jews were shipped to concentration camps.?We were told they were going to work in the East. There was never any postcards or word from them,” Kahn said.Kahn?s grandfather, on his mother?s side, lived near their home and Kahn walked to his home when he could, and listened to British radio broadcasts that provided news about Italy?s surrender and other war developments.In February 1945, Wiesbaden?s remaining Jews, including Kahn, his brother, Gunther, and their father, were ordered to report to a city railroad station and crammed into train cars.?For four days, we were on the train without food and water. They opened the door once a day so everyone could relieve themselves on the tracks,” he said.They were sent to Theresienstadt, a Czech fortress city converted into a camp, where Kahn recalled every available space was packed with bunk beds. Children were separated from adults and everyone lived on dried vegetables stirred into watery soup.Kahn was picking dandelions on one of the camp?s streets in spring 1945 when he heard shots, and bullets whistled by his head. The Russians had arrived to liberate the camp. By June, Kahn and his brother and father had made their way back to Wiesbaden on foot and horseback for a