Archive: Around Town

Fred Voss presents June Martin with framed letter from Elie WieselAs a seventeen year old Jew in 1938 Fred Voss got permission to visit his cousins in Krefeld, Germany, a young couple who were planning to escape from the Nazis.  On November 9th he heard a commotion.  He ran outside to see what was happening.  Thousands of people were watching the local synagogue being burned.  When he got back his cousin told him her husband had been taken away and that he should hide.  He tried going home, but his mother warned him to stay away from home, because the Nazis were looking for all Jewish males and taking them to death camps.  "I didn't know what to do," Voss said plaintively to a rapt audience of Lansing High School Sophomores Wednesday.  "I was as old as you are.  Would you know what to do?"

That was Kristallnacht, the "Night of Broken Glass" when Nazi storm troopers broke the windows on Jewish homes and businesses, looting and plundering them, and burned hundreds of synagogues throughout Germany and Austria while crowds cheered and local fire fighters protected surrounding buildings. On Wednesday Voss honored Lansing High School English teacher June Martin, for her outstanding work in educating students about the horrors that he and millions of other victims lived through. Voss presented a letter from author, Nobel laureate, and Holocaust survivor Elie Wiesel, commending her for the ‘effective and outstanding job you and your colleagues continue to do in educating young people about the horrors of the Holocaust.  Through your teaching, your students learn about past tragedies as well as the absurdity of any kind of hate.  Naturally I am moved and grateful to learn of your depth of commitment.  You are surely making a difference in the lives of young people.’



Abandoning hate and embracing diversity was Voss’s theme as he told of his childhood growing up in Nazi Germany.  Remarkably he doesn't foster resentment against modern Germany.  But when a student asked whether he had visited the concentration camps after the war he said that he never would, for fear of stepping on the ashes of a member of his or his wife Ilsa’s family.

Voss spends his time speaking at schools, colleges, churches, and synagogues, telling his story to anyone who will listen so that the atrocities will never be forgotten or repeated.  He is cynical about mankind learning from the past, but continues to spread his message.  "After the Holocaust the leaders of the free world said ‘Never Again’," he said.  "But, since then history has rather been: ‘Again, and again and again’."


He speaks with passion as he tells his own story of a childhood hijacked by uniformed thugs including teachers and fellow students who beat him up and humiliated him simply for being Jewish.  And millions of Germans who simply stood silently and let it happen.  He started with the history, likening it to the present day holocaust in Darfur, Sudan.  Students listened politely.  But then, as he told of his personal experiences when he was their own age and younger, he had their full attention.  You could see it in their faces as he related everyday experiences that kids face as a matter of course, gone terribly, terribly wrong.

The pictures Voss showed had a stong impact on his audience, because most were pictures that related directly to his family.  He showed the facade of his family’s apartment above the shop they owned, and told of how he came home at age 13 from his Bar Mitzvah to celebrate, only to be locked out by the Nazis.  Later he showed a picture of the building on Kristallnacht with its windows shattered and contents looted.  He showed a yellow star of David that his Aunt was forced to wear in Belgium.  When she forgot to wear it going shopping one day, she was arrested and sent to a concentration camp.  He showed his school class picture with 40 eight year old children posing, himself in the middle of the group.  Only seven survived the slaughter.

He concluded the slide show with images of piles of bodies that American soldiers found when they liberated the concentration camps.  Unidentified, they were destined to end up in mass graves.

After escaping from Germany Voss met his wife-to-be Ilsa in England.  Later the couple immigrated to the United States.  Grateful to the U.S. for saving his life, he joined the U.S. Army after Pearl Harbor, and found himself back in Germany as a young American soldier.  Later they lived in Lewiston, PA., finally moving to Ithaca.

Several students were moved to stay after the presentation.  Martin had bought copies of his book to give to them, and pursuaded Voss to conduct a book signing where they posed with him for pictures.  That was followed by a lunch, after which Voss repeated the speech for another group of sophomores in the afternoon.

Voss is still haunted by his experiences on Kristallnacht.  I still think back on that night almost daily,” he says.  “I can still feel the horrible horrible days like it only happened today.  There are many days and many nights when I still have flashbacks.”


Voss, 88, says that as a Holocaust survivor he is part of a dying breed, and students today are among the last that will hear first hand what it was like under the Nazis.  “The word ‘hate’ should be totally eliminated from our language,” he told the students.  “It starts with each one of you, and will spread the whole world through.”

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