WWII Survivor recounts horrors on Kristallnacht 

The Department of History, Loyola Libraries and the Polish Studies Program hosted 95-year-old Polish World War II survivor George Otto at the annual commemoration and 87th anniversary of Kristallnacht, or the Night of Broken Glass. 

Kristallnacht took place Nov. 9-10, 1938, resulting in the burning of 1,400 synagogues, thousands of Jewish businesses being vandalized and the humiliation, assault and murder of Jewish people.

At the event, Otto told his story of living in Europe at the time of the war, titled The Traumas of Childhood in a Time of War. Otto was 9 years old when the war began in 1939. 

Otto grew up in Warsaw, Poland and watched the Nazi regime unfold. His mother eventually sent him and his brother to their grandfather’s farm to get them away from the violence, Otto said during the event.

Throughout the war, Otto hopped between boarding schools and orphanages as his mother worked in Frankfurt am Main, Germany. After numerous attempts of running away, he reunited with his mother in Warsaw, only to be taken from school by German officers.

During the kidnapping, Otto describes riding in a bus with other children, being taken to a camp, forced to strip naked and shower in front of German guards. He was forced to take part in a Nazi Eugenics program called the Lebensborn (Fount of Life) Program, an Nazi effort to increase the German population and promote “Aryan” genetics. While the program focused on “racially valuable” pregnant women and providing them services, it also became complicit in the kidnapping of “Aryan” children.

In 1943, Otto escaped the camp and returned to Warsaw, and in August 1944 he was deported to Czechoslovakia. Otto was sent to Babylon from there, where American troops arrived on May 2, 1945.

Being a veteran and retired professor of management and economics, Otto is now an activist in the Polish American community. 

Otto, who has told his story to people for decades, said he hopes people will be reminded of the past and are able to learn new facts about the war. 

“I hope people get interested in these stories because today they have forgotten the wars behind them,” Otto said.

At any given moment, life can change — war can strike and a country can be destroyed. This is why stories from the past should be told, according to Otto.

This year marks the 80th anniversary of the end of World War II, and adjunct professor of history emeritus Elliot Lefkovitz said this may be the last opportunity college students will have to hear from a survivor of World War II.

With continued acts of antisemitism and genocide, Lefkovitz said he believes this message is important for people to hear.

“We are at a time of increasing antisemitism, so learning about what some of the consequences of antisemitism can be is very important today,” Lefkovitz said.

In the mid-1980s, Lefkovtiz started a class called the Holocaust and 20th Century Genocide during his time teaching at Loyola. He invited survivors of genocide to speak about their experiences, which led to Loyola holding three programs per year where survivors shared their perspectives, according to Founding Hellel Director Emerita of Loyola University Patti Ray.

Lefkovitz, considering recent genocides across the world, said people have a moral obligation to understand World War II and the experiences of survivors. He said he thinks the world is lacking that will to stop genocide.

“We are still lacking the unified, international, moral and ethical will to keep these events from reoccuring, and that is very sad,” Lefkovitz said. 

Chair of History Department Brad Hunt said he feels commemorative events are how people are able to remember the past and keep legacies of survivors going. 

Those who hear the stories of survivors are likely to have a better understanding of the tragedies and perspectives that curate these historical events, according to Hunt.

“By hearing voices of people who live through it, it creates an extra layer of empathy and hopefully understanding of the gravity of what happened,” Hunt said. 

With Otto being a Polish Christian, a new perspective of WWII is able to be heard and remembered, Hunt said. 

“We need to understand all the voices of what reactions were possible in those moments.”