An 82-year-old Holocaust survivor has made his third visit to Pembrokeshire to tell his moving story to senior pupils from three of the county’s schools.
Pupils from Tenby’s Ysgol Greenhill, Ysgol Bro Gwaun, Fishguard and Ysgol Harri Tudur, Pembroke, together with an adult group in a packed St Mary’s hall in Tenby listened intently and emotionally to Henry Ariel Schachter OBE as he recounted his testimony for the past eight years.
In Greenhill, he also visited the school’s memorial garden to see the progress of the Holocaust-reminder tree which he had planted on his first visit in 2015.
Year 9 pupils had worked with Year 12 A Level History students to create memorial stones bearing the names of Mr Schachter’s family.
These were placed by the tree and Mr Schachter recited a Jewish prayer in Hebrew.
Both he and his daughter Hope were overcome at the pupils’ gesture.
Mr Schachter started his talk explaining that Holocaust Memorial Day has an annual theme, which this year was ‘One Day’. His day was the one that his parents made the decision that saved his life.
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He recounted that he was born in Germany to parents of Polish descent. After Kristallnacht in November 1938 the family escaped to Poland, but once the war broke out realised that it would not be safe there either.
A hazardous journey across Europe to Belgium ensued, with baby Ariel drugged to be safely smuggled across the border.
The family hid behind a false wall in a Brussels warehouse, but this proved hazardous, due to a young child who might give them away.
They then braved living in the open with false identity papers, but as the situation became increasingly dangerous, the Schachters made the decision that saved the three-year-old Ariel’s life.
He entered a nursery and left a few days later as Henri Deffet, living on false papers and with new grandparents, where he stayed until after the war.
He last saw his mother on his fifth birthday, when he refused to say goodbye and give her a hug as he was angry she was leaving. Mr Schachter choked up as he told his listeners what he’d do to have that moment back.
Mr Schachter’s parents were caught a couple of weeks later and transported to Auschwitz.
As the war drew to a close they were moved, his mother to Bergen-Belsen where she died of typhoid just four days before liberation. Mr Schachter senior was sent on a death march to Flossenburg concentration camp. He tried to escape and was shot dead.
Branches of Mr Schachter’s family had escaped Europe for both Jerusalem and Britain prior to the war breaking out and all were delighted he had survived. He eventually moved to the UK and grew up with his family here.
He concluded his story with a chilling statistic. He explained that there were 3,000 people who perished in the Twin Towers disaster, in comparison to the Holocaust, where on average, 3,000 Jews died every single day of the week for five and a half years.
A Greenhill School spokesman said: “Our pupils were a credit to us, and as sixthformer Menna said, ‘the testimony was incredibly eye opening and very moving’.
Delta agreed. ‘Mr Schachter’s testimony made me realise the drastic impact the Holocaust had on so many people’.
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