Students can learn about history from textbooks and their teachers, but nothing compares to the eyewitness account one man shared with Putnam-Northern Westchester BOCES students on Friday.

"It's not an easy subject," said Stephen M. Berger, a Holocaust survivor who was born in Hungary and currently lives in Floral Park. "A difficult subject, but part of history and history is so important. We can learn so much from it."

Berger said it was luck that spared his own life and the life of his mother and younger sister during the time he spent under the Nazi occupation. From deciding to get on the first deportation train, which was not bound for Auschwitz, to having a civilian intervene when he was almost shot by an SS officer. 

Right before the liberation, he said he took a chance to hide with his mother and sister in a basement. But a German soldier came knocking at the door, so he was sure they'd be discovered. Nothing happened. As he went up to the door, Berger saw a Russian soldier and knew they were free.  

"My friends, you don't know how freedom feels until you lose it," he told the audience. 

After the liberation by Allied Forces, Berger briefly returned to Hungary. His parents and sister survived, but upon his return he found out 26 members of his immediate family were killed by the Germans and Hungarian Nazi collaborators.

"How did I keep my faith alive?" Berger responded when asked the question by a student. "Because I knew I was right, and they were wrong. I never doubted myself."

Berger, who said he has lost count of how many times he has told he story, is more concerned that once he is gone, there won't be anyone to tell it. 

"I worry about it a lot," he said. "The Holocaust isn't unique in human history and genocides are happening even today while we speak. Of course now it's not the Jews, it's the Christians' turn now."

He said more than 100,000 African Christians were killed in the last two years, Berger said. He asked students if they knew about it and a few hands went up. 

He said people need to study history and often the next generations of victims are those who have neglected to do so. He said many had missed the warning signs of the Holocaust, which he called industrialized mass murder by the 20th century’s barbarians, in the middle of a "so-called cultured" Europe. He referenced Pearl Harbor and the Twin Towers as other atrocities aimed at a specific group of people.

Berger, 85, was born in Debrecen, Hungary and got his education at local Jewish schools. He enjoyed reading books, citing Mark Twain as one of his favorite authors, and collected books into his own personal collection.

His whole life changed in 1944 when he was 16 and still in high school. The Nazi army moved into his city. They closed all schools, didn't let the Jews use public transportation, took away their radios and bikes, didn't let them to go to the library and forced them to wear the yellow Star of David in public for identification purposes. They also forced them into the ghetto, which was too small to fit everyone whom they brought. 

"But we as a community, always did the best we could," Berger said. 

He said he knew the Nazis were burning books, so in thinking how he could save his book collection, Berger out them all in a big box and buried them in the ground, thinking that when he comes back to his town, he'll get them back.

"You don't know what the future will bring," he said. 

He told stories of how a week after they were brought to the ghetto, their food ran out. He and two of his friends were able to jump over the fence, buy food and return to the ghetto. He described how he was forced to pull bodies out of the rubble and put them into a makeshift morgue. His mother fainted when she saw him covered in blood that night, he said. 

He spared students the gruesome details of what went on at a brickyard before he and others were crammed into cattle cars. 

"I'm not going to describe the situation at this brickyard," he told the audience. "Because I want you to sleep at night."

Later Berger and about 100 others from the ghetto were packed into trains and locked for three-and-a-half days, surrounded by the elderly, sick, women and children, as they were transported to the concentration camp Strasshof in Germany. Inside, there was no room to sit, or move and no food or water. Several people committed suicide on the train, while others tumbled over when they were let out. 

Before he was sent to a slave camp in Austria as a mechanic, he was nearly shot by an SS officer because he refused to leave without his mother and sister, but was saved by a civilian's intervention. 

"You work until you have enough energy to work," he said as he described the camp. "When you have no more energy, you're eliminated."

He described the small portions of food they were given and the constant hunger they lived with in a world where food meant survival. Toward the end of the war, he was given a sandwich by a main and food by the mother of a German soldier.

Little details were left out as Berger described the gas chambers: how people were told to undress, and that they would take showers, only to see poison coming from the hatches on top of the roof where German soldiers wore gas masks. Mothers held their babies and young children above them in hopes of giving them a few more seconds of life, as gas rose from bottom to top. 

"It took less than two minutes to kill innocent people," he said. 

Berger captivated students with his incredible stories of courage and survival. His message was not one of pain and suffering, but rather one of remembering what happened and to never forget because history could repeat itself.

"Nothing changes in this world," he told the audience. "Only people and places change."

He often called himself "lucky" to be alive and in many of his stories, despite tragic losses and excruciating circumstances, he would tell his mother that they've made it so far and were lucky to be alive.

"So much to tell and always not enough time," Berger told students.

After the liberation, Berger joined the Zionist movement, left Hungary, worked for the emigration of European Jews to Palestine and contributed to Israel’s war for independence.

At the end of his presentation, Berger took questions from the students and showed them a picture of a cattle car and his fourth-grade graduation picture. One student shed tears as she shook his hand, clearly moved by his stories. 

"I think he is a very brave man," 17-year-old Gennaro Zinganoe of Cortlandt Manor said. "And with all the things he went through, not to lose his spirit."

Gennaro said although he had known about the Holocaust, the one part of Berger's stories that stood out was the fact that he didn't think it was possible for someone to sneak out of the camps, as Berger did, and get away with it. 

Lonie Nugent, a 17-year-old student from Mount Kisco, said Berger had "lucky breaks" and enjoyed listening to his stories. 

"He had a more in-depth view because of his age and his fortunate outcome," Lonie said of Berger. 

As far as Berger, he said his wish is that the next generations remember what happened during the Holocaust and that it could happen again if people don't learn lessons from history. 

"I'll never say never," he said. 

Currently Berger is a member of the Queensborough Community College Holocaust Resource Center Speakers Bureau and Holocaust Memorial and Tolerance Center of Nassau County.

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