FORT SILL, Okla. (May 1, 2014) -- The earliest memory of Paul Kessler was when he was 3-years-old in 1942, in Czechoslovakia. He remembers hiding under his bed because bad people were coming to get him and his family. Weeks later, Nazis did take away his father, his grandfather and other family members and shipped them to Auschwitz concentration camps.
In 1997, at age 58, Kessler learned the fate of his father, Pavel Ungerleider, during a visit to the Auschwitz Museum archives. Looking at a record, he learned the ID number that had been assigned to and tattooed on his father. He read that his dad had arrived at the camp April 17, 1942, and was murdered June 10, that year.
"I felt the presence of my father, he was somewhere in that place," Kessler said. "For me, Auschwitz is not just a concentration camp, it's the cemetery where I visit the remains of my father."
Kessler, of the Dallas Holocaust Museum, was the speaker at the Fort Sill Days of Remembrance luncheon April 24, at the Patriot Club.
The annual commemoration was co-sponsored by the 31st Air Defense Artillery Brigade and Installation Equal Employment Opportunity Office. It was hosted by Brig. Gen. Christopher Bentley, Field Artillery School commandant and chief of FA, on behalf of the Fires Center of Excellence and Fort Sill commanding general. This year's theme is "Confronting the Holocaust: American Responses."
In her invocation, Marilyn Rumsey, Quarry Hill Chapel Jewish lay leader, said: "The losses to our people are known ... we fill these voids and repair those wounds by our thoughts, words and deeds to refute and defeat hatred and bigotry wherever it may be and whoever may be its victim."
Kessler said the Holocaust is not just about the extermination of 6 million Jews, but the total 11 million civilians who died. In 1933, shortly after Hitler was elected, the first people to be killed were disabled Germans, who the new leader called useless eaters, Kessler said.
"They were euthanized like animals," said Kessler, a former U.S. Soldier. "So you see the Holocaust is not just a Jewish story, it's a human story."
Kessler said he attends Holocaust events and often sees the motto "Never Again" referring to the hope that the mass killings of a people will not reoccur. Yet, since the Holocaust he cited example after example of such killings in Cambodia, Rwanda, Bosnia, the Congo and Darfur in Sudan.
"But the world has still not learned," Kessler said, "so the lessons of the Holocaust are still important as ever today."
At the Dallas museum, Kessler said what he and others try to teach young people is to be upstanders rather than bystanders.
"An upstander is someone who will stand up, speak out against hate, prejudice, intolerance, indifference -- wherever they find it."
Kessler said he was honored to be in the room with so many upstanders.
The speaker quoted Albert Einstein: "The world is a dangerous place to live in not because of those that would do you harm, but because of those who sit and let it happen."
Kessler also spoke about Holocaust survivor psychiatrist Viktor Frankl, who was useful to the Nazis because of his medical training. During his incarceration, Frankl noted that a few of the prison guards tried to make conditions better for the Jews.
This taught Frankl there are only two races in the world: the race of the decent man and the race of the not decent man, said Kessler, who lives in Fort Worth.
Kessler posed the question: What contributions to the world would have been made by the 1.5 million Jewish children, and the million other European children who were killed?
"One of these children might have found a cure for cancer or heart disease, one might have solved the world's hunger problems, some would have composed beautiful music and one might have written words that would eradicate hate from the human heart," Kessler said.
Several children attended the ceremony. One of those was Aaliyah Johnson, 16, of Meers, who has been researching the Holocaust as part of her homeschool studies.
"It's once-in-lifetime to meet someone who had survived the Holocaust," she said. "It's really eye-opening how things like that could happen, and you need to take steps to prevent it."
Bentley thanked all the participants and presented Kessler and his wife, Pamela, with a plaque.
"All we can do is pass to you our gratitude for reminding us of the past ... and to know what the future should never look like," the general said.
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