Holocaust survivor will speak at National Czech & Slovak Museum and Library

Peter Kubicek calls himself, 'the luckiest man alive.'

That's despite being imprisoned at age 14 in a Nazi concentration camp after being separated from his mother and grandmother who were captured with him.

He calls himself lucky because he and his mother both survived. His father had already escaped to the United States when Kubicek was deported from Slovakia in 1944.

He will speak about his story at the National Czech and Slovak Museum on Wednesday (8/12) as part of the museum's Great Stories Author Series. Kubicek also will sign copies of his memoir, 'Memories of Evil: Recalling a World War II Childhood.'

The book recounts growing up in then Czechoslovakia and his experiences as a Jewish child during World War II. He recalls how the German annexation of the Sudetenland shattered his idyllic life before the war, his separation from his family and his experiences in six different concentration camps during the war.

After the war, he spent months in a sanatorium, recovering from tuberculosis. Slowly, he regained his physical strength.

'The mental part was a different story,' he says.

For a long time he never talked about what he went through. After emigrating to the United States after the war, he wanted to put it all behind him.

'When I came to this country in Nov. 1946, I said, I want to concentrate on becoming an American, and I'm just going to forget about what I started calling my previous life,' he says. 'It took me several decades to be able to verbalize it and talk about it. And, I might add, a lot of Holocaust survivors never spoke about their experiences, or they speak in very vague ways. I know people who absolutely refuse to talk about it.'

When his daughters were in their early teens, however, he decided he wanted to write something for them, so they could know his story.

'I looked on them and I said, 'These little girls, at their age I was in a concentration camp,'' he says. 'I started by writing a short memoir for them on how I spent my 15th birthday.'

That was in a medical facility in Sachesenhausen concentration camp in Germany. He spent most of that year being shipped between sub-camps that were essentially slave labor camps.

But again, despite the horrors of the camp, he calls himself lucky. His family avoided capture during the initial deportation of Slovak Jews in 1942. Of about 60,000 people sent to concentration camps in that roundup, only about 240 survived.

When he was captured, some of the people in the cattle car he was in were able to see outside. They kept track of the train stations they were passing. When they realized they were heading toward Germany and not Poland, there was a flood of relief, he says. They had heard stories of the gas chambers at camps such as Auschwitz in Poland, where at least 1.1 million prisoners died. Some 30,000 inmates are believed to have died at Sachesenhausen.

As the war drew to a close and the Allied forces drew closer, the camp was evacuated in April of 1945. The camp's 33,000 inmates were sent on a forced march that killed thousands. Those who collapsed from exhaustion on the route were shot.

One night at the beginning of May, the SS soldiers slipped away, leaving their uniforms behind. When the prisoners woke they realized they were free. On May 2, 1945, they walked to the next town, which was in American hands.

Kubicek had survived, though not unscathed.

'After the liberation, concentration camp inmates suffered from PTSD syndrome. In other words, they did not know how to live with their memories,' he says. 'When I was liberated I had physical problems and emotional problems.'

Writing about his experiences, he says, has helped him heal, even decades later.

'The initial attempt at this memoir opened the floodgates,' he says. 'It really had sort of a cathartic effect.'

He self-published the first version of his memoir in 2006. His daughters encouraged him to keep writing, and he received so many comments and questions he decided to go back and write an expanded version. That book was published in 2012 and is available on Amazon.

'I always told myself, 'I'm the luckiest man alive,'' he says. 'Not only did I survive, my mother survived.'

After the war, Kubicek and other liberated Jews were sent to Prague, where he met a woman who had been captured with his family. She told him his mother was still alive, but he didn't know where to find her. Then, one day, she was suddenly there — he saw her standing at the end of a line for lunch at the YMCA.

His father applied for a visa for them, and in 1946 they arrived in the United States.

'Talk about being lucky every step of the way,' he says. 'I was more dead than alive at the very end, but I survived. I have now reached the age of 85, and I'm still alive and kicking.'

If you go

What: Holocaust survivor Peter Kubicek will speak

When: 7 p.m. Wednesday, Aug. 12

Where: National Czech & Slovak Museum & Library, 1400 Inspiration Place SW, Cedar Rapids

Cost: Free