I Remember Singing
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"When Innocent Men, Women, and Children are being Persecuted and Murdered, It is Not Enough That Good Men & Women Do Nothing."
Since 1933 terrible things had begun sweeping over and through our small German town. I was too small to understand much then, but these things would keep growing until our lives would never be the same. I could never have imagined such terrible things that now made me bewildered, afraid, confused, even angry . . . but those who fought back against the terrible things were immediately killed, maimed or taken away by Hitler's Gestapo (police). Therefore; we had to be calm and brave, do as they ordered, hope that they would not hurt us, and pray that the craziness stopped.
The day my country, my hometown and my neighborhood went the most dark and gloomy, it was as if the lights went out of the whole world. We didn't know it then but a very bad man had made secret plans to kill us. Adolph Hitler was his name.
Because I was a child, I never dreamed there might be people in the world who would not love me.
Hitler and his worst friends had taken over the German government, towns and cities, and planned to take over all of Germany. They had made more secret plans to take over all of the countries in Europe. They said, "Today Germany, tomorrow the world."
They were filled with hatred for Jewish men, women, children and many others. They were filled with hateful ideas about how they wanted the world to change to suit them. Their laws grew more and more restrictive.
They made it difficult to immigrate and then one day . . . it was too late. We couldn't just decide to leave, and then go.
Besides, we were patriotic German people. This was our country too.
Then, at 5:00 am one morning in 1940, Hitler's uniformed Nazi troops crashed our front door, and gave us one hour to pack. They forced us to leave our home and travel to board a train bound for hell . . . the Concentration Camp de Gurs in the south of France.
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About the Book
"This I remember was very special about Hugo; he sang for the little ones to comfort them when they were scared and missing their families." Alice Resch Synnestvedt, Rescuer of Jewish children during the Holocaust.
Hugo Schiller was seven years old when Hitler's Nazis dragged his father Oskar from their home in Grünsfeld, Germany and took him to the concentration camp Dachau. Two weeks later they brought him back without explanation, and forced him to sell Rosenbusch & Company, the family store.
When Hugo's school principal informed him that he could no longer go to school because he was Jewish, Hugo's parents sent him to Offenbach, Germany to live with two aunts and go to school. The morning after he arrived home for vacation break, Hitler's uniformed Nazi troops came for the family, giving them one hour to pack a suitcase and leave. Hugo and his family were deported to Gurs, a refugee camp in the South of France where they were held behind barbed wire in intolerable living conditions and with scanty food.
At the muddy Gurs camp near the Pyrenees Mountains, Hugo sang for bread for his Mother Selma and Aunt Hilda who were starving. One day cheerful Alice Resch drove into Camp de Gurs in a truck with a canvas flapping on the back. Working with the Quaker Refugee Relief agency, she had gained permission from the Vichy French Government to help feed the children. Soon after, she gained permission to take Hugo and the other children from Gurs to the children's home in Aspet.
In Hugo's true story there is unspeakable loss but also great triumph on many levels. Hugo Schiller, child-hero, bravely survived the Holocaust by helping others. Today, he speaks about his experiences and about how to help make certain a Holocaust never happens again.