One of the Last Living Holocaust Survivors Shares His Stories From Auschwitz
Why it took Michael Bornstein 70 years to start talking about his childhood.
By Zak Kostro
For most of his life, Michael Bornstein preferred not to talk about how he managed to survive seven months as one of the youngest prisoners of Auschwitz, where the average child his age survived only two weeks. But 70 years later, after a series of stunning revelations—including a document he discovered at a museum in Israel and a rare piece of World War II footage used in the 1981 movie The Chosen, in which he recognized his own face—Bornstein changed his mind.
In Survivors Club: The True Story of a Very Young Prisoner of Auschwitz, Bornstein and his daughter Debbie Bornstein Holinstat shine light on what happened to one Polish village in the wake of the German invasion in 1939. Working from Bornstein's own memories, as well as meticulous archival research and extensive interviews with relatives and other survivors, they offer a wrenching, shocking, and ultimately inspiring memoir, a tale of unrelenting optimism and resilience that is no less than miraculous.
In light of a recent surge in anti-Semitic acts throughout the U.S., and at a moment when the country finds itself increasingly divided along lines of race, class, sexual orientation, religion and political leanings, the book is hauntingly timely. And while Debbie stresses that she and her father didn't write Survivors Club with a political agenda in mind, Michael hopes it will open readers' eyes to parallels between a grim past and chilling present and, as he says, cause them to "wake up."
Michael Bornstein was inspired to document his harrowing journey when he realized that history was at risk of being forgotten.
MICHAEL BORNSTEIN: There were a number of revelations. One of them is a [Holocaust] deniers' website that really made me mad, because they looked at my picture on the front of the book and they said, "This kid looks great; the Holocaust wasn't so bad." That's what they implied. The other one is that survivors are getting older, and it's time to make a stand and mention some of the things that I've been through. And the third thing is, I have eleven grandchildren and they wanted to know more, and they implored me to discuss that with them.
Most of Michael's memories from Auschwitz live most strongly in his senses; others he had to fill in through archival research and conversations with other survivors.
MB: I was four years old, so it's difficult to remember everything. I seem to remember the smell of the ovens and burning flesh. I seem to remember Nazis marching. And when I go into a subway in New York City and it's very crowded, I seem to remember being crowded in a cattle car, going to Auschwitz, and thinking how bad that was. Debbie tried to fill in some of the things from memories, from diaries, translations from Hebrew, and talking to other survivors. As one example, we have a family member who lived behind us in Żarki, Poland, the town I was born in, and he told us the story about being on a work crew. He was about 15 years old, and one day he was very sick, he couldn't get up to march and work, and the Nazis came in, put a pillow over his head, took him to jail, and they were ready to execute him, and my father came in, bribed the Nazis, and saved his life.
A perfectly timed illness saved him from a death march.
MB: One of the pieces of information that was available at [the World Holocaust Remembrance Center] Yad Vashem is my tattoo number and the fact that I was in the infirmary when the Nazis had a death march. The Nazis were losing the war and they wanted to get rid of "remnants." My grandmother took me to the infirmary—which was kind of a makeshift infirmary that the Nazis had in case the Red Cross came in—and she hid me there. And it's a miracle that we went there instead of going on the death march because we surely would have died… There are a number of other miracles. My mother came to the children's bunk—she was in Auschwitz at first—and I was four years old. There were older kids that were starving, too. They took my bread away, and my mother came in, daily, to the children's bunk—she was beaten over the head for doing it—and gave me some of her bread and smelly soup.
I should have been dead. I should have been dead a number of other times. We were in Żarki ghetto, we were in Pionki ghetto in Auschwitz, where the survival rate for young children is about two weeks, and I managed to survive Auschwitz for close to seven months.
Soviet soldiers captured this image of Bobeshi, Michael's grandmother Dora (center), carrying him out of Auschwitz in 1945.
United States Holocaust Memorial Museum, courtesy of National Archives and Records Administration, College Park
In the process of working on Survivors Club, Debbie learned that her father's liberation from Auschwitz was in no way the end of his struggles.
Debbie Bornstein Holinstat: When we got through the Auschwitz chapters, I thought the worst was over. I thought, OK, deep sigh, the war is over, we can start talking about the good years. I actually did not know how hard it was for my father when he got to Munich. I knew that he was malnourished, still—my grandmother talked about getting him medical care. She's told us all these stories about how skinny he was and he had no hair, and we've seen the photos. I had no idea how ruthlessly he was bullied. I did not know he was sexually assaulted. I didn't know that he cried himself to sleep at night because he thought that his mother would be arrested and would never come home, for selling goods on the black market. There was so much more to find out that was horrifying beyond what I already knew. It was a difficult journey.
"It's unbearable to know that your father is an important character in history—like, he has a piece of history, and yet you only know one tiny little portion of it."
Growing up, Debbie and her siblings had a burning desire to know about what her father had gone through. But for a very long time, he didn't want to think about such an awful past.
DBH: It's unbearable to know that your father is an important character in history—like, he has a piece of history, and yet you only know one tiny little portion of it. It was really frustrating, and there was a period where I kind of gave up. There were years where we asked questions, my siblings and I, and asked and asked and we would always get the same answer. "Well, I don't know what I remember and what I think I remember," which my father still says, and that's OK. But there was more to learn, and he really didn't want us digging. My father mentioned he didn't even want me to go visit the Auschwitz death camp when I was traveling in Europe. It was so important for me to go, but he doesn't usually put his foot down. I called him collect from a payphone—I was 18—and told him I was going to Auschwitz the next day, and he literally begged me, "Deborah, please—I don't ask for much. I'm asking you not to go." And I didn't. I respected that. But it was very frustrating to be shielded from something that I felt was important to know, and I'm really proud now to know that my father so readily speaks about it.
It's incredible now to see the journey he's come on. The other day we were in Washington, D.C., for a taping, and at a restaurant, the waiter said, "Oh, what are you doing in town?" and we told him we were there for, you know, "We have a book coming out," and my dad rolled up his shirt sleeve and showed his tattoo, and that's something that he wouldn't have done 10 years ago.
Debbie will never forget the day she heard that her grandfather—Michael's father, Israel Bornstein—saved many lives. And she hopes his choice to risk his life and help others resonates for modern readers.
DBH: The most incredible revelation to me was the day I heard the words, "Israel Bornstein saved many lives—many people alive today credit their survival to Israel Bornstein." I got to call my father, run to his house, and tell him that his father was a hero. That was an incredible moment and something that made the whole process worth it, all the hard conversations about Auschwitz and Munich, kind of worth it for me. When you put it into today's perspective, I just think it's a good reminder to be an "upstander," you know? To be not a bystander.
None of us know which character or which family member we'd be in the book, if we were there at that time, but I would like to think that I was somebody who took risks to save other people's lives. My grandfather could have only looked out for himself or his immediate family and he made a conscious choice—maybe unconscious choice—to help others, and I think it's important, maybe today more than ever, that people remember to stand up not just for themselves but for other people when they see discrimination or mistreatment.
Michael Bornstein and Debbie Bornstein Holinstat
Tanie Michel Photographie
Michael and Debbie didn't write Survivors Club with any kind of agenda, but at the very least, they hope it will help people "wake up" and remember compassion.
MB: This is a good time to release Survivors Club, with the political situation, the anti-Semitism that's going on, desecration of cemeteries and so forth. It's time to make people understand that [survivors of the Holocaust are] normal people. We went through a lot, but we don't like discrimination, whether it's against Jews, whether it's against Muslims, Mexicans, whatever the case might be. They can be subjected to the same kind of discrimination that Jews were in Germany, in Poland, and other European countries, so I'm hoping that this book, being so timely, that people read it and understand that they need to wake up and do something about the discrimination that's ongoing in the world.
DBH: We didn't write it for that reason, ironically, and, yet, here we are, releasing it at a time when stories of discrimination make headlines every single day in the news. I am so hopeful that this book makes a difference, you know and, maybe, sometimes I think that these stories that weren't meant to preach or tell a story like that are the best ways—you just accidentally read a story about something that happened to a boy, and you realize, wake up. You cannot treat people, you cannot allow people to be treated the way, you know, Jews were treated before the war started, in 1939. And, as my father says all the time, where is the compassion? The world needs to remember compassion.
When Debbie and Michael started writing Survivors Club, they envisioned an endpoint. In a word, it was optimism. Or, as Michael says, "things can get better."
MB: What I'm hoping, and what I think we got out at the end of the book, is to show optimism—things can get better. "Gam zeh ya'avor." Continue to show optimism, and other groups, not just Jewish people, will learn from this and be better off from this.
DBH: When we sat down, it was important to both of us to make sure that there was a thread of optimism that ran throughout because there's a thread of optimism that runs throughout my dad's entire life. I think we stayed on course with that. I'm a little surprised by how hard it was and how many twists and turns there were to actually get to that ending. I knew what the ending was—you know, I know my family, now, today. I know my father. But, yeah, I think I learned a lot just by learning about the woman with the swastika necklace, for instance—I learned that you can't always take people at face value, or make snap judgments about people. I learned lessons along the way, again, about being an upstander. I learned lessons that I didn't anticipate I would learn.
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