Las Vegas Sun

March 28, 2024

Summerlin resident shares Holocaust experiences

Henry Kronberg

Richard Brian

Holocaust survivor Henry Kronberg retells his Nazi concentration camp experience while speaking to a crowd at the Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development on Oct. 29.

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Holocaust survivor Henry Kronberg retells his Nazi concentration camp experience while speaking to a crowd at the Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development on Oct. 29.

Before a crowd of more than 100 people, Summerlin resident Henry Kronberg re-lived experiences more than 60 years old — opening old wounds and recapturing dark memories from decades past.

Kronberg, 88, shared his experiences as a survivor of the Holocaust before an audience of all ages and backgrounds at the Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development on Oct. 29.

The Stillpoint Center for Spiritual Development, which opened in 2004, is at 8072 W. Sahara Ave. It is a center dedicated to spiritual development that is governed by a multi-denominational board of directors.

Kronberg is neither an author nor a motivational speaker but volunteered to share his experiences, said Steve Lodesky, associate director of the Stillpoint Center..

"It is invaluable for our young people to hear these stories and experiences first hand," Lodesky said.

"I would like you all to know, coming here to listen to me is the best compensation I could ever ask for," Kronberg said to the audience.

On Sept. 1, 1939, when Kronberg was 19 years old, the Nazis invaded Poland. His mother and sister fled to the east to stay with relatives near the Russian border, while Kronberg and his father traveled west to Krakow, which had a strong Jewish population.

But within a week, the Germans had occupied the city and Kronberg and his father were put to work in a labor camp in Krakow.

At first, they worked on a maintenance crew painting and cleaning offices. Kronberg vividly remembers scraping blood off the walls inside interrogation rooms where people had been tortured.

After months of working six days a week and 10 to 12 hours per day, Kronberg and his father were transported to the Krakow ghettos, where they lived in squalor.

Jews could practice their faith in secret within their living quarters, but nowhere else.

"All the synagogues in the city were burned to the ground," Kronberg said.

In March 1943, Kronberg and his father were re-assigned to a nearby labor camp. Just prior to their departure, Kronberg's father, Aron, contracted typhoid fever.

"The Nazis told me they were taking him to a hospital," he said. "I never saw my father again."

It was during his time spent in the labor camp that Kronberg met his future wife, Lillian, who was working as a seamstress. When the Nazis invaded her hometown in Poland, she fled from underneath a barbed wire and pretended to be an Aryan for three years — until it was discovered that she was Jewish and she was arrested.

"We've been married for 62 years," Kronberg said.

In January 1945, Kronberg and the rest of the prisoners were stuffed into rail cars and sent on a three-day, three-night journey to a concentration camp known as Gross-Rosen.

"The camp had a capacity to house about 6,000 people, but the population swelled to more than 75,000," Kronberg said. "It was a miracle that I survived. Maybe it was because I was younger."

One month later, Kronberg and hundreds of others were again stuffed into train cars — this time for a seven-day journey, with no food or water, to a concentration camp named Dora.

"By the time the trip was over, half the people in our train car were dead," he said. "We put the bodies in the corner of the car."

When they arrived at the camp, the prisoners saw bodies of people who had starved to death.

"After a while, the sight of dead bodies did not bother me anymore," Kronberg said. "But the smell from the chimneys of the crematorium was so bad, it's hard to describe."

Kronberg was put to work on an assembly line manufacturing airplane parts, but he and the rest of the prisoners knew the war was not going well for the Nazis — they would often see American bombers flying overhead.

On April 11, 1945, all of the surviving prisoners were assembled outside the wires and loaded onto trucks, with two Nazi guards aboard each truck.

"We asked the guards where they were taking us, and they said they didn't know," Kronberg said.

Three hours into their ride, the trucks stopped and the guards disappeared. The prisoners were trying to figure out what to do next when several American soldiers in a Jeep rolled past them.

"We all jumped out of the truck and started yelling and laughing and crying," Kronberg said. "Finally, we were free. But the first thing on our minds was food."

A German couple living in a nearby farmhouse provided the survivors with their first food as free men and women.

"It was the first good meal I had in many years," Kronberg said. "I felt my life was finally turning around for the better."

Kronberg and his wife moved to Newark, N.J., in 1947 and began to rebuild their lives in America.

Unfortunately, Kronberg's mother, Ann, did not survive the Holocaust. The whereabouts of his sister, Lala, remained a mystery for more than 20 years until he attended a bar mitzvah in Montreal, Canada, in 1967.

While sitting at a table with several other Holocaust survivors, Kronberg learned that Lala was alive — and living in Las Vegas.

"She has since passed, but that is how I wound up here in Las Vegas," he said with tears in his eyes.

After the event, dozens of guests — many of whom were children and teenagers — eagerly shook Kronberg's hand.

"I don't like to speak about it or remember it, but it's a story that must be told," he said.

Jeff O’Brien can be reached at 990-8957 or [email protected].

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