Grace Kirchner, Leader Correspondent
Photo by Grace Kirchner Clintonville Middle School teacher Pam Skokan assists Henry Golde, Holocaust survivor, as he autographs his book “Ragdolls,” which recounts his life in concentration camps during the Holocaust. Many students purchased his book after hearing his presentation in the high school auditorium on Tuesday.
“Hate is nothing. Love is everything,” Holocaust survivor Henry Golde told Clintonville Middle School students Tuesday.
Golde is the author of “Ragdolls,” which recounts his life from the age of 11 to 16 as a witness to Holocaust horrors and atrocities in Poland, Germany and Czechoslovakia.
Golde was born in Plock, Poland, and grew up in a normal Jewish family until he was taken, at age 11, from his hometown by the Nazi Party’s Schutzstaffel Army. He said his only crime was being born a Jew.
“For five years, I feared for my life every day,” he told the students.
He was moved from one concentration camp to another. There was very little food, Golde said, and for three years he didn’t grow an inch.
Conditions were awful, he noted. At one location, the sanitation was bad and they could only take one shower a month. He was stricken with typhoid fever and survived.
“I don’t know if it was luck, faith, or a small miracle that I survived,” he added.
Eventually, he was able to make his way to London, where he met his future wife. After they came to the U.S., he worked in a sweat shop in New York and drove a cab. After moving to Appleton, he has made his living as a tailor, though he suffered a retina detachment in the concentration camps. Ninety percent of his eye is dead, he said.
Golde has not been back to Poland. He said he is still not wanted there, and he doesn’t have any relatives there. He was never able to find out how his family died.
Despite the treatment he received from the Germans during World War II, he told the students that he did not hate them.
Golde’s presentation was funded by the Clintonville Historical Society and the family of Gladys and Marlin Boyer. Pam Skoken, a granddaughter of the Boyers and a sixth-grade teacher, made the arrangements for the program.
Later in the day, Golde met with members of Clintonville American Legion Post 63.