♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> They came to a new world, a new country and started a new life.

And then was able to become a business owner.

They loved it.

For him it felt like a great accomplishment, back in Poland where everything was stripped from everybody, they cannot own property.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ When they came here in 49, they actually lived on Irving Street and at first it was not easy.

They did not want people to know they were Jewish, they were not certain of what the people's reactions would be.

They immediately went to opportunity school, probably Emily Griffith.

It was important to them to learn how to read English and write English.

And become part of the community and they studied hard and worked hard.

My father would work three jobs.

She worked at Duplers Furs, at Star Bakery and my father worked at Elitch Gardens.

He would drive a taxi, and here they raised 4 children.

I am the youngest of five, they were very kind and very caring and very loving.

Friends would ask me do you have grandparents?

And of course I did not.

And that's very hard because you feel like a part of you is missing.

I did not know what they look like, I have no photographs of any of my family, my parents always especially my father always talked about the Holocaust, so we were all aware of the tragedies and what they had lived through.

Sometimes when they immigrated to America, he would just pull out notebooks and start writing and then he would start over and start writing.

I have all the notes, and I think also it was healing for him because of his survivor skills.

Being traumatized at such a young age, how do you ever forget that?

♪ [Music playing] ♪ I have always sung as a child, I just love it and it is a time when you forget everything.

When you sing.

When I came to the United States, I did not want to be identified as a Holocaust survivor.

I did not want to talk about my life and what it was in Europe.

I worked on my language skills, because I did not want to have an accent.

My dad was very religious.

He always believed God was going to save us all.

We had a wonderful life and did not know that we were poor, my parents always had enough food.

I had an older sister and three brothers in between.

We were a very very close family.

One day, the Gestapo, the German police came to our home and ransacked our house.

Made a mess out of it.

I was seven years old and it was very frightening.

My father was born in Boryslav Poland.

>> There were about 50 Jewish families living in the village.

They were all very close to each other, everyone was ready to help his neighbor anyway they could.

>> He helped on the farm, they had a dairy cow, they had a horse and cart that not only did they used to make deliveries from our grocery store they would also use it as a taxi.

>> The Prince family was the largest family in the village.

My mother's parents had a large family and my father's parents had a large family.

We had a great number of aunts and uncles and we all helped each other out as much as we could.

>> On September 1, 1939, their lives all changed.

>> The Nazis and their collaborators in the various states created ghettos in the 20th century in order to concentrate the population to control population and to restrict the population and prevent escape and that became or those ghettos became major ports of embarkation to concentration and death camps.

The bomb start falling and the Germans come in and they are invading the rest of Poland.

At that point, they have everybody out of their homes and they take them to a town in Germany and there they separate the Jews from the polls into different groups and my father and his father and their family they watched in disbelief as they take all their precious belongings and their holy books, their talluses, everything that meant something to them, and threw it in a pile and they light it on fire.

We were helpless as the Germans laughed and mocked us, we walked silently crying as all of this was burned before our eyes.

The Germans asked where is your God now and we were told there is only one God now.

And his name is Adolf Hitler.

>> One of my father's friends comes running to the farm and he tells them the Nazis are here, they're here to take your father.

>> So my father ran home and he talked to the commander.

I begged him not to take my father but to take me instead.

I wanted my father to be able to stay home and take care of our family.

I told the headmaster that I would work very hard for him.

After giving me a very careful look over, he agreed to take me.

I was 12 years old.

>> My father's father ended up dying anyway.

We think he died in prison.

>> That was the saddest day of my life because for the first time I had been taken apart from my family.

>> One of the things that Nazis did and of course in the states they conquered was strip people of their citizenship, and when you are no longer a citizen or do not have a passport, you do not have rights.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> Two weeks later my sister came running back from work and she told my mom to take us into the field because the Gestapo surrounded the refinery and she thought something terrible might happen.

My mom said to her come with us, do not go back to work.

And she said the Germans know me well, and nothing will happen to me.

She went back to work and the Germans decided that there were too many Jews working there.

So they made two lines, they said you go to the right, you go to the left.

My dad wound up in the right line, my sister and my uncle wound up in the left line.

My sister saw where my dad was, she ran to be with him.

People were taken by train and my dad and my sister and brother and many of our cousins.

They took them off the train and documented them and they went into the gas chamber.

My mom said to one of my brothers to go home and see if it is safe to go home.

He came running back and he said it's not safe.

Our house was ransacked and things were taken out of it.

We could not go back.

My mom went to this friend.

Her name was [indiscernible], and she had a little tiny house and she had an attic.

She was such a good friend of my mom and my mom asked her if we could hide in her attic and she said yes.

My mom would have to go out three times a week during the night and go to different homes that she trusted.

And she got food for us.

One night, my mom went out and 3 19-year-old young men saw her and recognized her and when she was returning to us, the Gestapo was waiting for her.

Our mother was shot and taken to the [indiscernible] jail and the following morning, a certain German would come in the morning and whenever they found any Jews, during the night, he was the designated shooter.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> My younger brother was very fair, he could pass for a Gentile.

He decided he did not want to stay with us any longer.

We really did not want him to leave us, but he said I can't stay here any longer, I must go, so he left us.

Friday we heard a roar, my brother jumped out and he looked through the peephole and he said there were five motorcycles coming down the road.

He said they are coming for us.

So the two of us ran downstairs and we hid under her bed.

Sure enough, the Gestapo tore down her door and the first place they looked was under the bed.

They pulled us out into the courtyard and all the neighbors were outside looking at us and they kept beating my brother on the shoulder because they were told there were more Jews than just the two of us, he had this huge welt, they kept beating him with a club and I kept crying to the Gestapo, please do not hurt my brother.

>> Children suffer disproportionately, the Orthodox suffered disproportionately because they were more cut off from avenues of escape, children of course were more vulnerable than adults were, how they managed to survive, I really don't know everyone's story of survival, it is idiosyncratic it is its own story.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> The 32 Jewish people from our village and all the others they had rounded up were loaded on a big cargo car on the train.

There were no windows; there would seem to be no air, we crowded and squeezed in, we could barely turn around.

Finally the train started moving and we did not know where we were going or what destiny awaited us.

>> In 1941 the first concentration camp he went to was Poigenberg.

There he works on building the autobahn, and laying railroad for the trains that are going to travel to Germany.

>> In the morning after we took our showers, we stood in line to get a little piece of bread and after that we had to march about 6 km to work.

>> He had to carry bags of cement weighing 5200 pounds and he would load them on a large ship.

Then they would take the ship back to Germany.

>> On the ship was a young couple, I did not know who they were.

Every day that we came to work, they would put a sandwich in the corner of the ship just for me.

They never spoke a word to me, they would just show me where the sandwich was.

They were taking a very big risk.

>> Then he was sent to another concentration camp called [indiscernible].

And he has always told us this was the worst camp he had ever been in.

The guards were just awful, he said.

They had a bunker outside and every night they would put 50 prisoners in this bunker and cover it with wood.

And of course they would suffocate these prisoners.

Every morning they would take these 50 bodies out and they did this every night my father said.

And then when people became too weak to work or were not working up to the expectations, of the guards, they took them out of the woods and they would make them strip the clothes off, make them dig their graves, and then they would murder them.

After a time, they took us on the motorcycles and they took us to the [indiscernible] jail.

We arrived at the jail and the man that was in charge of the jail was Polish and they asked us over and over again where the other Jews?

You have to tell us.

I was crying so much that the man that was head of the jail even took me on his lap to console me.

The man said to the Gestapo, take those two down and into the basement cell.

The cell was very very small, it had bars on the window but no glass.

We laid down on the wood bed together to cuddle so we could keep warm.

My brother got restless.

And he got up.

And I kept saying to him, please come and cuddle me, I'm so cold.

He said, I want to see what's outside that window.

He stood up on the bed, and he said I'm going to try to squeeze through those bars.

If I get out, you will not have any trouble because you are so little.

There is a guard that comes around every so often and when he turns the corner, then you can go.

And I will meet you on the other side.

And I am hysterical, please do not leave me, he says I'm going to try.

Even if he makes himself, and he's out.

I pull myself up to the bars, sure enough the guard comes around and when he turns the corner, I get out no problem.

I was so little.

I ran across the street, I climbed over that huge fence, and I'm in somebody's garden, and I'm looking for my brother I'm calling his name in a whisper.

Where are you... no answer.

I go further into the garden, where are you?

No answer.

I am hysterical, I don't know my way, I don't know where to go, and I start crying really really loud.

[Music playing] >> My mother did not like to talk about her time in the war.

It was so traumatic for her, it scarred her for the rest of her life.

She thought she had a normal childhood and she did movies with friends and family and she loved going to the synagogue, high holidays, always meant to her she could get new clothes and she would go to the synagogue and she could see the fashion, what everyone was wearing, she loved it.

She was close to her mother; her family was also Jewish Orthodox and Yiddish was the primary language in their home.

The Nazis came in and invaded [indiscernible].

My mother lost everybody except for a sister.

So upon arrival at the camp, my mother and my aunt are sent to the showers and shaved and get their clothing.

They are screaming for each other, my mom and aunt, because they do not recognize each other anymore.

And they are calling for each other, my mother is given a prisoner number at this point and she is now prisoner 2543.

And here they have to work building houses for the Germans and my mother at this point, she's only wearing what she described as a robe and wooden shoes and it's wintertime.

So she would take the empty cement bags which were probably made of burlap at that point, and she would stuff them in her robe and she got caught.

And her punishment was a beating.

>> The final solution was how Hitler and his allies in the Nazi hierarchy and in various collaboration regimes, implemented a plan to kill all the Jews, there was not an idea that there would be Jewish reservations.

Or something like that, the idea was to completely exterminate everyone.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> A woman comes out of the house in the garden, and she says who do I hear crying?

I said that I am Jewish, and I just escaped from the jail across the street, and I do not know my way.

Can you please please hide me?

She said I cannot hide you because my husband works the night shift at the jail.

And when he comes in the morning, he will take you right back and shoot you.

I wondered, what am I going to do, where am I going to go?

And the thought came into my mind, my mother used to take me to the public showers every Friday and that was in Borek.

If I thought maybe the lady knew where that was from there, I could find where my aunt and uncle were hiding.

So I said to the lady excuse me, do you know where the public showers are in Borek?

And she said yes, I said can you take me there?

Please.

She said okay I will take you there.

I made sure that she was long gone before I went to where my aunt and uncle were hiding because I worry that if she saw where I was going, she could report us to the Gestapo.

I waited a long time and then I went to where my aunt and uncle were hiding.

They were hiding in an Attic over the stable.

I started to walk up the ladder and Mrs. Kerensky heard me rustling around and when she came out she said "Enya, what are you doing here?"

And I told her what happened and by dawn my brother came and we reunited.

We hid in the attic for two more years.

>> How the individual survivors managed through that hardship I really don't know, I'm not always certain that they know beyond the circumstances, psychologically that is really a mystery, they were tough and traumatized and fortunate in their greatness of fortune, some held on only because they hope to be reunited with their family and some held on in a survival instinct, and I think of adults who survived, there were many who said the reason that they stayed alive was to testify and provide testimony after the fact, that they did not doubt that the Nazis would lose that the collaborators would lose and they would have to one day present a kind of witness to their suffering and to their tyranny of the world and so that People lie.

>> My father was liberated by the American Army and on April 11, 1945, he was 17 years old and weighed 44 pounds.

They took him to the hospital and fed him intravenously and brought him back to health.

The doctor who treated me when I started walking again came over to me and shook my hand and said Mr.

Prince, you are alive again.

I did not think that you were going to make it.

May God bless you and good luck in your future life.

>> I don't know the exact dates that my father joined the American Army but he did so because he was so grateful for the Americans liberating him and nursing him back to health.

>> In 1945, I met my wife and she was at a DP camp where all the people who are liberated were placed.

They were people from all over the whole world and that is how they found each other.

She had known the same suffering that I had.

She had been in the camps and she had lost all her family in the war, except for one sister.

On October 22, we got married, the whole camp was invited and we had a wedding outside the camp under a canopy.

I had a few friends from my hometown and they gave me a big present, the hat.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> We were liberated by the Russian army it took about six months and we had heard bombs going off from the artillery in our village, my brother was able to walk because he would go out for food but my uncle and myself, my aunt was very ill at this point and we had to be carried.

We needed to get over to the American side because things were becoming bad on the Russian side.

And in order to get over to the American side you have to be smuggled across the border.

My brother earned enough money to pay off the guard to take us across the border.

And that's how we wound during the night in Austria and a DP camp by the name of Ranshofen.

>> They had their homes and their individuality and their clothing and their families and their citizenship, everything stripped from them many were recovering from starvation and nowhere to go and no sense of whether the outside world really cared.

Many came to America and Colorado was certainly one of those destinations.

America became a haven in 1881 or so, hundreds and hundreds of thousands of Jewish people from Eastern Europe and Central Europe and especially Russia and they come over to the US and had worked hard and bought into the American dream and they become assimilated and Americanized and they had the wherewithal the money to help their more distant relatives who had survived the war and come over.

And they did, they brought them over and tried to take care of them financially and put them into schools and help them recover their lives.

>> My aunt and uncle were already here in Denver Colorado, so my uncle went to Jewish children services and explained to them, my wife has one living relative of her immediate family and they need to be together.

So my parents were able to come to Denver Colorado.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ There were a lot of talented people at this DP camp and I had a pretty voice and they always asked me to perform on stage.

Whenever they put on plays, and one night after the performance, a woman soldier came over to me, an American soldier and she said to me I would like to meet your parents.

And I said I have no parents.

She said how'd you like to go to America?

And I looked at her and I knew she was an American but I did not know that there was an America, and I did not know.

I had no education up to this point.

I told her I would have to ask my brother.

And when I went home that night, I told my brother about her and he said yes we want to go to America, he had tried so she filled out papers for us and this is how we were able to go to the United States.

She started the process for us.

♪ [Music playing] ♪ >> The younger they were, the better they did, young people are extraordinarily resilent, and some of the people married people who grew up in America and were able to garner a sense of connection and integration from that.

Others sought out survivors so that they would have someone who understood their pain and their loss and sometimes it was a second marriage if the first family had been decimated.

And in Denver Colorado, the last decade there was something about 500 survivors that were still living in Colorado living their lives and trying to in some way make up for the years that were lost.

>> When I came to the United States, I wanted to be an American and I did not want to be identified as a Holocaust survivor, so I would never speak about it and I never could even speak to my children to tell them the story.

Because it was too painful.

And when I moved to Colorado, there were not many Holocaust survivors that would speak, so I get asked all the time to speak.

>> The survivors who I know or have met in my life, they feel a responsibility and that responsibility is often a burden and a conviction that they carry with them and they need to testify to what they endured in a belief.

That by telling their story and what they suffered they could forestall it ever happening again.

We live in a state that during the pandemic in 2020, they signed into law thanks to the work of elected officials and Holocaust survivor signing it into law, the bill that mandates education from Holocaust and genocide in public schools.

In the state of Colorado and that is where we come in from the Holocaust with University of Denver and I believe that if we educate about some of these elements, people will get a sense that they too have a responsibility not to let this kind of horror occur again.

>> My family learned to appreciate and show his tattoo more with pride because it came to mean that he survived.

They tried to degrade me and humiliate me, and they tried to murder me and they did not succeed, I am here and he won.

So did my mother and so did my aunt and every other survivor out there.

>> When they heard people talk about the Holocaust being a big lie and a fabrication, that's when I really started hurting again that is why I began telling the real story.

I want the whole world to know that there was a Holocaust.

I did go through it and I have seen it with my own eyes.

♪ [Music playing] ♪