FORT DRUM, N.Y. -- Holocaust survivor Steven Hess, who attributes his family's survival to the bravery of American and Allied troops during World War II, received two standing ovations on post last week following Fort Drum's annual observance of Holocaust Remembrance Day.
"Without the heroic efforts of the American armed forces, the world would have been a different place," said Hess, a Jew born in Nazi-occupied Holland, "and the Jews would certainly have disappeared."
Hess, a U.S. Navy veteran, successful businessman and frequent guest lecturer in the Rochester school system, was just a toddler when the systematic, state-sponsored murder of approximately six million Jews began in Germany.
He was 7 when he, his twin sister, Mary, and his parents were liberated aboard a train on their way to an extermination camp.
The 74-year-old came to Fort Drum to recount the horrors of Nazi Germany for more than 200 Soldiers and guests who had gathered April 17 for the special observance at the Commons.
The ceremony began with the singing of the national anthem, an invocation and the introduction of Hess by Sgt. 1st Class Armando Bueno, 10th Mountain Division (LI) Equal Opportunity adviser.
Bueno noted the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., had designated this year's theme as "Choosing to Act: Stories of Rescue."
He said Holocaust stories of rescue remind the world of the wide range of choices that individuals are capable of making.
"We must never forget, however, that for each person who was rescued, countless more were killed," Bueno said.
As Hess began his speech about the Holocaust, he tried to give his American audience a better understanding of the atrocities by bringing up Sept. 11, 2001.
"Approximately 3,000 people were killed (on 9/11). To give you a sense of scale, the Nazis murdered 3,000 Jews on average every day, seven days a week, for approximately 1,800 days," Hess said.
The Nazis also killed five million others, he added, to include religious clergy, gays and gypsies.
Hess said most non-Jews living under Nazi domination during the Holocaust were bystanders.
He said it was not only because they had little connection to their Jewish neighbors but also due to the dangers of aiding Jews.
"Rescue always came down to the individual or small organizations," he said. "It was always a personal choice and a moral choice that depended a lot on personal courage.
"Keep in mind," he added, "most people did not help."
Hess said more help was needed in some locations and during certain periods of the war, because the Holocaust differed in place and time.
"Nazi terror had a lot to do with the attitude of the Nazis towards the local population and the attitude of the local population towards the Jews," he said. "For example, in Eastern Europe, the attitude of the Nazis towards the Poles was horrendous, while the attitude of the Poles towards their Jewish neighbors was about as bad. So there was a great disincentive to help the Jews (there)."
Hess said Poland was the worst place for Jews. Nearly three million people -- more than 95 percent of the Jewish population in Poland -- were killed by the Nazis.
He said a council established by the Jerusalem-based Yad Vashem recognizing the "Righteous Among the Gentiles" declared the largest number of non-Jews who lent assistance to Jews was by far among Polish Christians.
"Keep in mind that in Poland the threat and danger of helping Jews was far greater than anywhere else," Hess said. "You were executed without exception."
The situation in Denmark under Nazi occupation was not as deadly for Jews.
"Same Holocaust, same Nazis," Hess said, "but if you look at Denmark, where the Nazis did not have this racial hatred towards the Danes they were occupying, and the Danes had no history of anti-Semitism, nearly all the Danish Jews survived."
For Jews who had little hope of escaping the Holocaust, relying on the goodwill of neighbors or local sympathizers became their only chance of survival.
For example, Hess said, in an area of southern France, a group of Protestants called the Huguenots hid Jews in their homes for as long four years, providing them with forged IDs and ration cards and helping them over the border to safety in Switzerland.
"With their history of persecution as a religious minority in Catholic France, the (Huguenots) acted on their conviction that it was their duty to help neighbors in need," Hess said.
He also told the story of Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who initially used Jews as cheap labor, but eventually developed an affection and respect for them as human beings. Hess said as the Nazi regime's killing machine intensified, Schindler used his cleverness and "a certain amount of charm" to personally save more than 1,000 Jews from deportation.
"It was a very, very small percentage of people who in the end made a small difference in the numbers (rescued)," Hess said. "But from a perspective of morality and courage, it made a huge difference."
He concluded with a story of rescue that involved citizens from halfway around the world.
Hess called America's victory in World War II "the greatest, most effective and most important act of rescue" of the entire Holocaust. He said as Allied forces rolled through Germany in 1945, some 100,000 Jews -- including he and his family -- were still alive in concentration camps, largely discovered by the "horrendous stench in the air," he said, and not because the camps were ever a military objective.
After the speech, Col. (P) Richard D. Clarke, 10th Mountain Division (LI) deputy commanding general -- operations, thanked Hess for coming and talked about the good still being done by the Army around the world.
"As Mr. Hess talked about, there's that (small percentage) -- the ones (who) really go in and do something to make a difference," Clarke said. "I really look at that as Fort Drum today ... and what our Soldiers are doing each and every day as we battle against injustices."
Clarke said the work Soldiers do in building Afghanistan's security and infrastructure, allowing "young Afghan women (the chance) to go to school for the first time."
"While this is not the Holocaust going on in the places we are, it very well could be," the commander said.
After the ceremony, Pfc. Jasmine Williams of 590th Quartermaster Company, 548th Combat Sustainment Support Battalion, 10th Sustainment Brigade, said she was happy to hear how much America had helped the Jewish people in a time of great suffering.
"It made me very proud to know I'm a part of the army that went in and (liberated those camps)," she said.
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