Holocaust Survivor's Torch Lighting: 'I Saw Elijah the Prophet in Auschwitz'
Tzvi Glazer, a Holocaust survivor who lit a memorial torch, shared his life's story: Lodz Ghetto, Auschwitz, Dachau, a two-minute escape, facing death, the selections, and eventual rescue and survival.
- נעמה גרין
- פורסם כ"ז ניסן התשפ"ב
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"I knew I was going to die. The question was not if but when," recounts Tzvi, a Holocaust survivor who today (Thursday) lit a torch in memory of the six million Jews who perished in the Holocaust.
Glazer was born in 1928 in Poland. At age 12, a ghetto was established in Zdunska Wola, and all the city's Jews were ordered to move there. When the ghetto was liquidated, Tzvi was transported with his mother in cattle cars to the Lodz Ghetto. His father and brother were sent to the gas trucks in Chelmno.
In August 1944, explosions were heard from the Red Army guns, and the Jews of the ghetto hoped for liberation. However, before the Red Army's arrival, the Germans rushed to liquidate the Lodz Ghetto. The surviving Jews, including Tzvi and his mother, were sent to Auschwitz. In Auschwitz, Tzvi was separated from his mother and transferred to a labor camp, from where he was sent to Dachau, and then to another camp in Germany.
During forced labor, amidst a heavy snowstorm, Tzvi collapsed. An older German guard approached him and saved his life. "He removed my wet clothes, dried them, and gave me a slice of bread with jam. I saw Elijah the Prophet in the form of a German guard," Tzvi shared tearfully.
Tzvi fell ill with typhus; once he recovered, he was put on a train to an unknown destination. During the journey, alarms warned of Allied aircraft, and the guards ordered the prisoners to disembark and lie outside. During one alarm, Tzvi decided to escape. The Nazi guards chased him, but he managed to evade them. "Everything depended on those two minutes of escape," Tzvi recounts.
He arrived, gaunt and exhausted, at the home of a German farmer. He introduced himself as a Pole and worked on the family's farm in exchange for food and shelter until liberation. In 1945, shortly before boarding a ship sailing from Italy to Israel, he learned his mother had survived. They both immigrated to Israel. Tzvi married Yehudit, and they had three daughters, ten grandchildren, and three great-granddaughters.
