A concentration camp liberator shares his story

Bernie Lens, 94, often carries a handful of photographs in his shirt pocket.

The images are from Dachau concentration camp, some from the very day in the spring of 1945 when, as a young American soldier, he was ordered to the site 12 miles outside Munich. Two prisoners, he says, died in his arms as he was carrying them to freedom.

Though seven decades have passed, the memory of what he encountered continues to haunt him.

"There's not a day that goes by that I don't relive what happened," said the Yardley resident, reaching to share the photos of horror - piles of bodies, almost unrecognizably human.

"We were totally taken aback," said Lens, who is Jewish. "We couldn't move - we were in such shock when we saw the conditions. You're looking at men that were 80, 90 pounds, and you know they were once 150, 160 pounds. They were on their deathbed. . . . They were scared to death."

They'd been torn from their homes and their families, robbed of all possessions.

"Many didn't know where to go," said Lens, while sharing his story with a spellbound audience of seventh and eighth graders last month at Saint Martin de Porres, a Catholic school in North Philadelphia.

It's a presentation that Lens, along with Danny Goldsmith, 83, who was a hidden child during the Holocaust, makes about twice a week to local schools and community groups as part of a Holocaust Remembrance Education program of the Jewish War Veterans' Fegelson Young Feinberg Post 697 of Bucks County.

The volunteer-run program, chaired by Vietnam-era veteran Allan Silverberg, 71, of Langhorne, began in 1995 as a poster display at a local mall. Later, it was expanded to Bucks County public schools and, more recently, throughout Philadelphia, including schools in the archdiocese. The group is also increasing its presence in New Jersey.

Aspiring to work against hatred, discrimination and bullying, Silverberg urged the students not to be bystanders, but to stand up and speak out if they witness injustice.

There are several survivors who are members of this Jewish War Veterans post, but Lens is the only known liberator. Lens, who has been sharing his story for 15 years, now wears a hearing aid and uses a walker. This hasn't slowed his pace or passion for enlightening students on the dangers of hatred.

"I realize that youngsters [today] do not know what the Holocaust was all about," said Lens, who, as an Army infantryman, was stationed on the front lines in Europe during World War II. Facing the enemy on the battlefield, he repeatedly looked death in the face. Yet it was the atrocities he saw at Dachau, he says, that were the most unhinging.

Following the war, the native Philadelphian held several jobs in the clothing industry. "I was never completely settled," he said, as horrific images from the past often fill his mind at bedtime. "There are certain things I will take to my grave."

The students listened to Lens in silence, eyes transfixed on the slide show of photographs: gas chambers - resembling showers - where Jews were exterminated; crematoriums; malnourished inmates with sunken eyes in striped prison garb; dead bodies - nearly skeletons - piled atop one another; freight trains without food, water or sanitation facilities that transported Jews to concentration camps; Jews wearing yellow Stars of David; two lines where Nazi soldiers separated those who would live and work in a camp from those who would die.

"Hitler couldn't dig the graves fast enough," said Lens, recalling the bulldozers needed to move the masses of bodies.

As part of the slide show, Lens told a story he'd heard about a little boy, about 6, whom American troops discovered wandering aimlessly after the war at Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany. "The Nazis had killed his mother and father. One of the soldiers adopted him and brought him back to the States."

Lens also told of the shock expressed by generals Dwight D. Eisenhower and George S. Patton, when, upon liberation, the horrors of the concentration camps became known. Eisenhower instructed U.S. soldiers to take as many photographs as possible, in the event that, one day, people might deny the Holocaust ever happened.

Even as Jews worldwide honor the memory of the six million on Yom HaShoah, or Holocaust Remembrance Day, which starts at sundown tonight, the last two decades have seen an increase in efforts to deny the Holocaust - for instance, publishing editorial-style ads in college newspapers.

"There's a movement worldwide that has gained momentum where people are saying the Holocaust never happened, that it is propaganda," said Kristina Anne Bauer, a Saint Martin de Porres social studies teacher instrumental in bringing the speakers to the school. "I wanted my students to meet these men, know what they went through and pass on these stories."

Since the group's presentation, Bauer's students have asked to take a trip to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

"Every single student was deeply moved by the program," she said. "They couldn't believe that something like this happened and that people didn't do anything about it."

Amirah King, 14, described the photos as gruesome, but said she was glad Lens shared them: "For people who are doing the wrong thing, like bullying and being hateful, I feel like I can pass on this story. I'm glad to hear from people who actually lived through it and not just read about it on the Internet."

Silverberg underscores that Holocaust education in Pennsylvania is limited: "In New Jersey, New York and other states, it has been mandated for decades." Although Pennsylvania signed into law a Holocaust and genocide education bill in 2014, Silverberg says, there is minimal funding and no mandate. "The law encourages the teaching; it is not the requirement to teach. Each school district decides for themselves."

This is the last generation, notes Silverberg, that will hear those who were eyewitnesses. The numbers of Holocaust survivors are dwindling, and World War II veterans are dying at a rate of nearly 500 a day.

"It's so sad how history goes on," Saint Martin de Porres' principal, Sister Nancy Fitzgerald, told the students. "Some of your families have been victims of injustice. There is still injustice, not just in Ferguson or here, but throughout the world - like ISIS."

Combatting it, she said, "begins when we make a change, when we stand up and stand out."

Said Kaira Mack, 13: "The Holocaust was a really bad thing that happened. I don't want it to happen again. I'm going to keep telling this story."