The Star News 3/22/05

Holocaust survivor to speak at Elk River Public Library April 5

by Britt Aamodt
Special to the Star News

From June 1943 to April 1945, he would survive five concentration camps, death marches, starvation and near constant fear. His 5-foot, 6-inch frame would reduce to 82 pounds before his liberation by Patton’s 3rd Army. But Henry Oertelt survived. Eleven million others — six million of them Jews — did not.

In 2000, Oertelt published his memoir, “An Unbroken Chain: My Journey Through the Nazi Holocaust.” When the author comes to the Elk River Library on Tuesday, April 5, he will share the story of the 18 links that made up his chain of survival. Without any one of the links — people, chance happenings, personal characteristics — Oertelt believes he would have perished in the Nazi Holocaust. The author’s presentation begins 6:30 p.m. in the library conference room.

Twenty-two, a furniture designer and a Jew, Oertelt boarded a train in Berlin. It was June 1943, and Hitler was in the 10th year of a master plan to exterminate people he labeled “Untermenschen,” or sub-humans. The train unloaded Oertelt, mother Elsa and brother Kurt at Theresienstadt, a concentration camp outside Prague.

Oertelt’s journey had begun. Simultaneously, one link in a series of 18 interconnected links was forged. He and his family were incarcerated comparatively late in the extermination campaign, which stretched back to 1933.

Oertelt later wrote that if he had been incarcerated a month earlier, he would have starved to death before war’s end.

“Remember I weighed 82 pounds when I was liberated,” said Oertelt, who today shares his story with students and organizations throughout Minnesota. “I didn’t have much longer to live.”

Oertelt also identifies his health, youth, optimism and furniture-building profession as links in his survival. While other inmates quarried or worked construction, Oertelt built camp bunks and a mahogany desk for Nazi officers, allowing him to burn fewer calories and live longer. People also played a role in Oertelt’s survival.

Oertelt was liberated April 23, 1945. His mother died, but he and Kurt survived.

With wife Inge, Oertelt immigrated to St. Paul in 1949. They have two children.

Journalist

http://www.erstarnews.com/2005/March/22holocaust.html 

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