Jack Terry

Jack Terry (* 10 March 1930 in Eastern Poland: actually Jakub Szabmacher ) is a Polish-American author. In the Second World War, he was the youngest surviving prisoner of the concentration camp in Flossenbürg.

Life

Terry was born as one of four children of a Jewish merchant family and grew up in Bełżyce. Under the occupation of Poland by the National Socialists, his father was first deported to the Majdanek concentration camp. Bełżyce belonged to the area of the Izbica Gestapo, Kurt Engels, and Terry witnessed several murders. In October 1942, he and his family were expelled from the city together with the Jews still living in Bełżyce. When he noticed in the column of the deportees that his mother had not come, he fled back to his hometown. There he found his mother and sister. His brother had been shot during the expulsion. At the beginning of 1943, the surviving members of the Szabmacher family were taken from the Ghetto Bełżyce to the Budzyń camp. There he was witnessed when, on 8 May 1943, the Emperor's leader, Reinhold Feix, shot his mother and sister during a selection. Terry was brought to work in Budzyn in an aircraft yard of the Ernst Heinkel aircraft works. As the Red Army approached, he came to an airplane production in a salt mash at Wieliczka and finally to Flossenbürg concentration camp at the beginning of August 1944. It was first used in the quarry, later in aircraft production and during the last three months before the liberation of the camp in the prisoners' laundry.[1]

On April 8, 1945, the SS began to evacuate the camp in Flossenbürg under the impression of the advancing troops of the US Army. The commander Max Koegel sent the marchable prisoners on a death march to the Dachau concentration camp. Inmates hid the 15-year-old Terry in a tube tunnel, which led from the laundry into the kitchen. When the US Army entered the camp on April 23, 1945, he was the youngest prisoner. As the only member of his family, he had survived the Holocaust.

A Colonel from the invading division took him out of the orphanage and took him to the United States. Only as a soldier of a unit stationed in Heidelberg, Terry returned to Germany in the 1950s. In the US, he first studied geology but later changed to psychoanalysis and now lives in New York City .

In 1995 he returned to mark the 50th anniversary of the liberation of the camp at Flossenburg to meet with former prisoners. Since then, Terry has been coming to Flossenbürg every year. He is a member of the foundation board of the Stiftung Bayerische Gedenkstätten and spokesman of the former prisoners of the concentration camp Flossenbürg. In 2005 Jakub Welt wrote a book in which he tells his life story. In January 2011 ZDFneo showed a 45-minute documentary The Two Lives of Jack Terry.[2]

Terry was awarded the Bavarian Order of Merit in July 2007 for his outstanding citizenship.

References

  1. ↑ Geissler, Cornelia (21 January 2011). "Wie aus dem 15-jährigen polnischen Juden Jakub Szabmacher, der das deutsche Konzentrationslager Flossenbürg überlebte, der amerikanische Psychoanalytiker Jack Terry wurde: Der traurigste Tag". Berliner Zeitung (in German). Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  2. ↑ Bönisch, Georg (24 March 2009). "Holocaust Survivor Jack Terry: 'I Felt Sure I Would Not Live' - SPIEGEL ONLINE - International". Hamburg Germany. SPIEGEL. Retrieved 15 February 2017.
  • Jack Terry (Author), Alicia Nitetzky (trans.): Jakub's World - The Memories of Jack Terry. Bavarian State Center for Political Education, Munich 2005.
  • Talk with Jack Terry: " Civilization is a very thin varnish over human nature " in the BLZ report, ed. 4/03, ed .: Bavarian State Center for Political Education

Report at Frontal21 on September 1, 2009

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