Just like Anne Frank, Henry Fenichel was in hiding with his family in the Netherlands when they were captured and sent to concentration camps — he and his mother to Bergen-Belsen, his father to Auschwitz.
Fenichel will tell his story as the speaker for the sixth annual Holocaust Memorial Program Wednesday night.
He lived in the camps from the ages of 4 to 6, but eventually escaped from the camp where Anne Frank ultimately passed away, as part of an exchange by the Templers — a German Protestant sect.
Fenichel and his mother lived in Palestine during the creation of the state of Israel, when they packed up and moved to the United States. He became a physics professor at the University of Cincinnati and is currently professor emeritus of physics.
The Holocaust Memorial Program has become an important spring event for students to attend, said Rabbi Danielle Leshaw.
“Hundreds of students and community members gather for a chance to remember, educate themselves and sit with others that care about past and current issues around genocide,” she said.
The event is sponsored by the Office of Multicultural Programs, the Black Student Cultural Programming Board and Hillel at Ohio University, who will also be swabbing before and after the event.
Each year, the story is different, but the messages are always similar, said Winsome Chunnu-Brayda, the associate director of the Multicultural Center.
“I’ve heard all five speakers, and they have all had such different experiences, but one thing that remains consistent is a message for students to be aware of atrocities happening everywhere and to take a stand against those atrocities,” she said.
Fenichel volunteered to speak for no charge, but Chunnu-Brayda said a donation will be made to The Center For Holocaust & Humanity Education. Fenichel was contacted through the center’s Speakers’ Bureau.
Fenichel said he has been telling his story to bare witness to the brutalities that humans are capable of.
“Your generation are the last ones who can meet someone who lived through (the Holocaust),” he said. “I was a young child then but I’m moving on, and people need to know what, as humans, makes us capable of the horrible things we can do to each other. Somebody needs to speak out.”
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This article originally appeared in print under the headline "Survivor of the Holocaust to share his story."
