ADDISON — “I am a Holocaust survivor and I don’t know how I survived it.”

These were the opening statements from Max Steinmetz, prisoner number 72041, a man who survived the atrocities put upon him during the terror giving to millions during the Holocaust.

“They told us the minute we got that number, our name had died,” he said. “We were known by that number.”

Steinmetz’s nightmare began in 1944, when he was 18-years-old.

“They took my family to a concentration camp,” he said. “I was 18, my brother was 17, my sister was six.”

His family was put on a train for three days and three nights before arriving in Auschwitz.

Upon arrival, men, women and children were lined up six in a row for the Angel of Death to decide on their fate.

Steinmetz said Dr. Joseph Mengele was there with a leather whip.

“The selection, they lined us up and we faced these officers, especially the Angel of Death,” he said. “He had a whip and would point right or left.”

He and his brother went to the right, while his parents and sister went to the left.

“That was the last time I saw my family,” he said. “My family went to the left and I never saw then again.”

It was only days later that Steinmetz learned the fate of the rest of his family while talking to another captive in the camp.

“I saw a cloud of smoke. It smelled horrible, like burning flesh,” he recalled. “He said that’s what your smelling. They are burning them.”

He was told the ones that went to the left, where taken immediately to the gas chambers, gassed, then burned in the incinerators.

“They were finished the day we arrived,” he said. “They were gassed then burned in a crematorium. They spread the ashes into the fields.”

After spending a few months at Auschwitz, Steinmetz and his brother were sent to Dachau, a labor camp.

“We were slaves,” he said. “We worked all the time, from day until night with little food.”

Steinmetz said one of the most painful ways to die was of starvation.

“We were just nothing but a bunch of animals, or worse than animals,” he said. “You have no idea how painful hunger is. I have seen people killed for a slice of bread.”

Just a little more than two months before liberation, Steinmetz’s brother was deathly ill.

“My brother actually starved to death,” he said. “I wasn’t able to get enough food.”

Steinmetz said he doesn’t know why he was spared.

“I had two wishes, one was to see Germany lose the war and the second was to have one good meal.”

One day Steinmetz said he was ready to die. He walked away from his work in a field.

“I knew because of the snow, they would see me and shoot me,” he said.

Steinmetz was not shot and continued walking, until he came upon a house where he knocked at the door.

“A little boy answered the door and screamed for his mother,” he said.

Filthy, tired and hungry, Steinmetz was let in the house by a women.

“While she was fixing me food, a soldier walked in and I just knew I was finished,” he said.

Fortunately for Steinmetz, he was not a Nazi soldier.

“He said the American’s were on their way and would be there in a few days,” Steinmetz said.

A man of six feet, one inch, weighing 80 pounds at the time of liberation, as Steinmetz ate, he became extremely ill.

“I was there for three days and finally American soldiers came,” he said. “I was taken to the hospital for two weeks.”

After his time in the hospital, Steinmetz went to a Displaced Persons Camp (DP). He applied for an American visa.

In 1948, he arrived in New York City. He found a job and moved to Denver, then Albuquerque and then to Birmingham, where he has been for the last 60 years.

He met his wife Betty there and they have three children and six grandchildren.

“We spend our time visiting our children and grandchildren and go around to schools,” he said. “I want them to remember to never allow this to happen. It can happen again.”



* Tiffany Green can be reached by e-mail at tgreen@cullmantimes.com or by telephone at 734-2131, ext. 220.