Alexander Silbiger was a young child when Nazi Germany invaded and occupied his home in the Netherlands. On Feb. 12, Silbiger told the story of his family's escape from the country in Elon University's Holocaust Remembrance Day speaker event.
Holocaust survivor Alexander “Lex” Silbiger says that, in the years following his family’s escape from Nazi-occupied Holland during World War II, he rarely thought about the experience, let alone wanted to share it with others.
“It happened so long ago during my early childhood. It had no bearing on my present life. My parents almost never talked about it. Few of my friends were even aware,” said Silbiger. “But then I became aware it was happening again in Rwanda, Bosnia, Sudan, Myanmar, again, again and again. And eventually, as hatred and antisemitism certainly, began spreading, even in the United States, I decided I needed to come out and tell my story.”
And that’s what Silbiger did in a packed Turner Theatre on Feb. 12, part of Elon University’s Holocaust Remembrance Day Speakers Series. Elon has hosted Holocaust survivors annually for more than nine years. Funding has enabled Professor Max Negin and his Holocaust Journey course to collaborate with Jewish Life, the Jewish Studies department, and the Truitt Center for Religious and Spiritual Life. The speaker event was made possible through sponsorship from the Levy Family P’26.
Benji Stern, co-president of Elon Hillel, introduced Silbiger by reflecting on his experience in the Holocaust Journey study abroad course, which takes students through tours of concentration/extermination camps, ghettos, and discussions with Holocaust scholars and survivors.
“It was a profound and emotional experience that brought me face to face with both the history and the human suffering of the Holocaust,” said Stern, who discussed reading the Mourner’s Kaddish prayer at a memorial during the experience. “With a slightly broken voice, I pulled up the words on my phone, and together, we recited them. In that moment, a shared moment, Jews and non-Jews standing shoulder to shoulder, I felt something that I’ll carry with me forever. The moment was special because all of us participated, not only Jewish people remembering, but that collective act of remembrance reminds us that we’re all connected.”
In May 1940, Silbiger, now in his 90s, was just 5 years old when Nazi Germany invaded the Netherlands.
“At first, the life of the Jews under the occupation, while certainly unpleasant, did not appear to be life-threatening,” said Silbiger, who said there was a false sense of security but also rumors of the mistreatment of Jews in Eastern Europe. “Jews had lived in Holland for many centuries, they had made important contributions to its economy and its culture and become a really valued part of the nation. Dutch people would never let their fellow citizens be mistreated in this manner. No one could begin to conceive the eventual role of the Nazis to extinguish the life of every Jew in Holland.”
Everything changed when Silbiger’s parents hatched a plan to escape from the Nazi-occupied territory. His mother woke him up and told him they were going on “a trip to the country.”
“I was surprised because I had not been told anything about this beforehand, and because of the (Nazi travel) restrictions, we had not been traveling anywhere,” he said. “We sneaked across the border to Belgium. Once we arrived there, I learned we were not going back home until the Germans were gone from Holland. Suddenly, without preparation, this 6-year-old was cut off from all of their friends, his stories, everything else.”
The family, including Silbiger’s older brother, adopted aliases and traveled through France across the demarcation line to southern France, down to Spain, before eventually traveling by boat to the Gibraltar Refugee Camp in Jamaica. His father used diamonds, hidden in an old smoking pipe, to help keep them afloat financially throughout the year-long journey.
“Conditions may not have been so much worse than in a summer camp, except you were forced to stay there for an indefinite length of time, perhaps even several years,” said Silbiger of the refugee camp. “On the other hand, our lives were no longer in danger and, for that, we were grateful.”
Silbiger’s father’s engineering skills eventually helped the family get to the Dutch Carribean island of Curaçao and, following the end of the war a few months later, they were able to return to Holland – but it looked much different. Their home in The Hague was still standing, but had been gutted, and his grandparents were taken to a concentration camp in Poland, where they were murdered.
“I still have fond memories of my grandparents, who lived only a few blocks from us,” said Silbiger. “The thoughts of their last days and final moments continue to haunt me.”
His parents decided to return to Curaçao, where Silbiger finished high school before attending college in the United States. He later married a U.S. citizen, relocated to Germany for a time, and eventually resettled in Durham, North Carolina, where he was a professor at Duke University. Silbiger has since worked to spread awareness of the danger of religious hatred, including in his memoir “Our Great Escape: The story of a Dutch family’s flight from persecution (1942-1943).” He encouraged the audience on Thursday night to have compassion for anyone escaping their homeland in search of a better life.
“They have the same hopes, the same desires, same needs, they are like you and me,” he said. “We must open our hearts (…for) these people, some who entered the country illegally because they didn’t have proper papers. Then again, neither did we. We entered France illegally. If we hadn’t done that, I wouldn’t be here to tell my story.”