little Moshe was gassed
SIX times at Belsen before he survived!
As an 11 year-old boy held captive at the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp during World War II,
Moshe Peer was sent to the gas chamber at least six times.Each time he survived, watching with horrors as many of the women and children gassed with him collapsed and died. To this day, Peer doesn't know how he was able to survive.
"Maybe children resist better, I don't know," he said in an interview last week.
Now 60, Peer has spent the last 19 years writing a first-person account of the horror he witnessed at Bergen Belsen. On Sunday, he spoke to about 300 young adults at the Petah Tikva Sephardic Congregation in St. Laurent about his book and his experience as a Holocaust survivor.
The gathering was part of the synagogue's Shabbaton 93, which brought together young adults from across North America for a cultural and social experience.
Called Inoubliable Bergen-Belsen (Unforgettable Bergen-Belsen), Peer wrote the book to make the reader feel like a witness at the scene. But he admits he can never recreate for anyone the living hell he experienced. "The conditions in the camp is indescribable," Peer said. "You can't bring home the horror."
In 1942, at age 9, Peer and his younger brother and sister were arrested by police in their homeland of France. His mother was sent to Auschwitz and never returned.
Peer and his siblings were sent to Bergen-Belsen two years later. He recalls the separation from his parents as excruciating. But surviving the horrors of the camp quickly became a priority.
"There were pieces of corpses lying around and there were bodies lying there, some alive and some dead," Peer recalled.
"Bergen-Belsen was worse than Auschwitz because there people were gassed right away so they didn't suffer a long time."
Peer said Russian prisoners were kept in an open-air camp "like stallions" and were given no food or water. "Some people went mad with hunger and turned to cannibalism," Peer said.
There is a tiny beauty spot on little Moshe's survivor story. According to the latest Holocaust revelations, Belsen had no gas chambers. It was far from being an extermination camp but a camp for prominent, influential Jews for future exchange, therefore treatment was accorded them. But don't worry, little Moshe, the Germans still believe your Zyklon B six-pack-story - they must believe you, by law, you know!
Did Little Moshe Really Die Six Times Before He Survived?