Surviving Hate, Preaching Love: Nathan Taffel

A soft-spoken man nearing 90, Nathan Taffel, sits in his small Mequon ranch home remembering a cheerful childhood as a young boy with curly hair and bright blue eyes.

It was a cheerful childhood for a time, anyway. He thrusts forward an arm to reveal a weathered tattoo that he can never quite erase. He wants people to know what they did to him and all of the others; he is a living testament. It says “KL.” Koncentration Lager. Concentration camp.

Taffel has gone through tragic events that most people only read about. He was born a Jew in a Poland invaded by Hitler. He is a part of history. Taffel is a Holocaust victim and a survivor.

Taffel doesn’t understand why there is so much hate in the world and even compares the world’s reaction to the Holocaust to the recent tragedy in Paris.

“I look and I see Paris, there were killings going on,” Taffel said. “There was thousands and thousands of candlelights and the whole world is in shock. Six million Jews were killed and the whole world didn’t do a darn thing. Not a candle. Nobody except for those participating in the killings. For what? Why? Am I different? I bleed the same way you do.”

Taffel is now 87-years-old and resides in Mequon, Wis. with his wife, Muriel. They have three children – two sons and a daughter.

After the tragic events that happened to Taffel’s family, he has now placed a strong priority on his own family, saying that life would be “worthless” if it wasn’t for his family now.

“I have the greatest family alive,” Taffel said. “I couldn’t wish for a better family. The most important thing in life is family.”

Taffel has lived in America, specifically the Milwaukee area since 1957, after living in Australia for 10 years.  He decided to come to America to take care of his sick brother – the one who he survived the Holocaust with.

“This is the greatest country in the world to live in,” Taffel said about America. “I love this country.”

A cheerful childhood

Born on May 17, 1928, Taffel was the youngest of 10 children. He lived in Poland, where his parents were farmers.

As young boy with curly hair and bright blue eyes, he remembers a cheerful childhood.

“I lived in a very, very loving environment,” Taffel said. “My family was very adoring. My sisters were always singing. Life was good. We were well off. Life was good.”

Taffel began attending public school when he was around 5-years-old, he said. The school was located right next to his home. For the most part, he enjoyed school, but he remembers times of anti-Semitism from classmates, prior to World War II.

“You were made fun of for being a Jew,” Taffel said. “Anti-Semitism was very prevalent.”

He would ask his parents what it meant to be called a “Jew, Jew, Jew,” but they would tell him to not worry about it, he recalls.

In 1933, Adolf Hitler came to power in Germany.  Taffel remembers people moving out of Germany to different countries, including Poland.

However, it was not until 1939 that Hitler declared war against Poland, and Taffel recollects the large amount of Nazi soldiers in Poland.

“When we heard the German Army approaching the city, my parents, siblings and I went down into the basement,” Taffel said. “We heard the German soldiers, who had steel boots, steel-plated shoes, from quite a distance.”

Taffel even recalls when they came to his house and the interaction his father had with one of the soldiers.

“When they approached our house, we heard them coming, and my father and I went upstairs,” Taffel said. “My father spoke to one of the soldiers, and he [the soldier] started beating him up.  Up to this day, I can’t get over seeing my father getting beaten up. Very tragic to see your father getting beaten up.”

Taffel was 11-years-old when Poland was first occupied by Germany.

His family’s house was searched, and the Gestapo took anything of value and threatened his family if they didn’t surrender.  He wasn’t allowed to attend school, either.

“Life was tragic,” Taffel said.

The anti-Semitism intensified after the Germans occupied Poland, but since Taffel was under the age of 13, he wasn’t required to wear a yellow armband with the Star of David, which identified the Jewish people.

However, Taffel encountered a near-death experience until his brother saved his life.

“There was something constantly happening everyday,” Taffel said. “Then they announced any men 18 years to 21 years of age had to gather in a hall. My brother was picked because of his age.

“I was kind of inquisitive, and I wanted to see what happened. I took a bike to go see him. While I was riding the bike, two Gestapo men yelled out, ‘Stop, stop,’ and I didn’t. They took their guns out to shoot me, but my brother saw it from the window. He came out and begged them to let me go. They let me go.”

Eventually, his parents decided to hire a man with a horse and wagon to take the family at midnight from Radomysl to the bigger city of Tarnow, where Taffel’s sister and husband lived with their son in a ghetto.

This is where Taffel’s life would change significantly.

“We stayed in a ghetto for a period of time,” Taffel said. “One day, a man came in and called my brother-in-law in the hallway and hung out with him.  My brother-in-law came in and said to me and my sister that you got to put coats on. You are going on a trip. Don’t talk. Don’t sneeze. Don’t cough or say anything. You got to be quiet. “

Little did the young Taffel know that this would be the last time he saw his parents.

“He was taking us out, and I looked in the bedroom door, where my parents were there with my sister,” Taffel said. “The door had a crack open, and I couldn’t even say goodbye. It was very tragic for me as a young boy to not be able to say goodbye and not know where I’m going.”

Taken to camps

Taffel and his sister ended up being taken to a camp at Smoczka. Their three sisters were already at the camp and were stunned to see them safe.

This German camp was located in a forest, Taffel recalls, and he said if they didn’t like somebody, they would take them into the forest and shoot them.

At 13-years-old, Taffel worked extremely hard and diligently. However, on one occasion, a Gestapo officer pulled Taffel outside, with the intention to shoot him. Luckily, a foreman, who told the officer that Taffel was a good worker, saved him.

“Life was horrible,” Taffel said, who witnessed people dying from starvation and diseases on a regular basis.

Following the construction job at Smoczka, the Jews were taken to the Mielec labor camp, where there was an airport factory, which was run by the Germans.

At Mielec, Taffel was reunited with one of his brothers, who was assigned to live in the same barracks.

When they entered the camp, they received a permanent tattoo on their right forearm with the letters “KL.” This stood for Koncentration Lager (concentration camp). Taffel said that it got infected, but it eventually healed.

Life was horrible at Mielec, Taffel expressed.  After a year, he and his brother left, leaving their sisters behind, and were taken to Wieliczka, a town just outside of Auschwitz.

There was no more room for any more people at the camp, so after a few days, the men were divided up. They lined up and received a red ink marking on their forehead. Some received an “I,” which meant tot, meaning dead in German, while others, including Taffel and his brother, received a work symbol on their foreheads.

Taffel and his brother were then taken away to Flossenburg in Bavaria, Germany.

He was selected to work for a German engineer to make parts in order to repair the planes without having to use rivets.

“On one occasion, I went to get some parts because he [German engineer] sent me to a different department,” Taffel said. “One of the foremen didn’t ask me anything, and he put me on a pedestal and gave me 27 lashes on my back. And I was crying. It hurt. The engineer asked me what happened, and I told him. He just shrugged his head. He couldn’t do anything.”

They had minimal to eat with people once again dying from starvation and diseases.  His friend even found a human finger in his soup. Taffel said he’s not sure if he ate it, since he turned his head because he didn’t want to see if he did.

The crematoriums couldn’t keep up with the dead people so the Germans decided to put stacks of wood next to the barracks and light it on fire, and dead bodies were placed on the fire and burned, Taffel explained.

Life in Flossenburg was terrible, Taffel stated. They worked long hours for six days a week, while not being able to bathe.

“We were treated like animals,” Taffel said.

After a year at Flossenburg, Taffel and his brother were on the move again.  They were originally placed on trains. But, after the Americans disabled the train engines twice, they were taken off and were forced to walk on a death march in April of 1945.

“My brother’s feet were swollen,” Taffel said after they had marched for a while. “He couldn’t walk. I dragged him to the front. We kept going. We didn’t get any food. We were starved.”

Eventually, they arrived in a forest and were forced to line up.

“They were ready to shoot us, but a German officer from the regular Army, with one arm, came from a distance and called the SS people,” Taffel said. “He huddled with them and talked to them.  After awhile they disappeared.  We stood there in awe. We didn’t know what to do.”

Taffel and his brother decided to walk around and see. Soon they found a pig farm.

“We approached the pig farm and there were some pigs with a trough with food,” Taffel said.  “We grabbed from the trough and ate it.  While we were doing that, the German lady in the house saw us doing that, and she threw bread at us. We ate that.”

After eating, they found a haymow where they slept overnight. Once they woke up the next morning, they found out the Americans were close.  They decided to go meet them.

Liberation

Taffel and his brother ended up finding American soldiers in the nearby town of Stumsreid and were greeted with food from the soldiers.

“I remember he [a soldier] gave ma a can of jam and he opened it,” Taffel said. “By that time, I was four and a half years in labor camps, and I never had any sweets. I was devouring the jam, and he told me that I’m going to get sick.”

The soldiers gave him a pair of pants that were so big that they came up to his chest.  They also gave him a shirt and shoes, Taffel said.

After becoming free, Taffel learned how to become a steel molder and became a shoemaker.  Over the course of time, he and his brother spent some time living with and working for a German family, doing chores such as cutting wood.

Eventually, Taffel’s brother decided to go back to their hometown in Poland to see if he could find their family.

While his brother was gone, Taffel dreamed about his family being intact.

“That I came home, and that I was the last one to arrive and everyone was greeting me,” Taffel said discussing the context of his dreams. “I was hoping that everybody was good and everything was fine.”

Unfortunately, his brother returned with bad news. Taffel’s family was nowhere to be found.

“When he came back and said the natives chased him out so that he wouldn’t stay in the house and that there was nobody left, I created a hate,” Taffel said. “I hated so bad that I couldn’t sleep. I couldn’t wait to get a hold of a gun and go out shoot those people that killed my family.”

This was Taffel’s philosophy until one day when he decided he couldn’t handle the hate anymore.

“The hate wasn’t allowing me to rest,” Taffel said. “Until something came into my mind and said, ‘Nate, if you keep on hating the way you do, it will destroy you like the rest of the haters. Hate destroys. Hate destroys the individual. Hate doesn’t accomplish anything in the world.”

The only other family member to live past World War II, besides Taffel and his brother, was their oldest brother, who lived in Argentina during the war.

This brother moved to Argentina when Taffel was just an infant and when Taffel was 60-years-old, he took a trip to Argentina to meet his brother for the very first time.

His older brother was 21 years older than him and when Taffel met him, he gave Taffel a family photo. Taffel met his brother five times before he died.

Seventy years after the ending of World War II, Taffel still thinks about his family and the Holocaust.

“I have dreams,” Taffel said. “I have sleepless nights. It isn’t easy. The only person who can understand it is the person who went through it.”

Taffel has shared his experiences on a regular basis to students and groups of people all around the country for the last 12 years.

Taffel’s niece Keri Guten Cohen also wrote a book titled, Stolen Childhood, detailing his experiences before, during and after World War II.

Taffel enjoys seeing the respect and attention people give him when he shares his story. However, he believes that schools should be teaching more about the Holocaust.

“There is not enough teaching about the Holocaust and the atrocities because maybe the generations after would stop the hate in the world,” Taffel said.  “There is still so much hate going on.”

Taffel said religion has a lot to do with hate and that he hopes he can live long enough to see that there’s peace on Earth.

Taffel mentioned that he belongs to a temple, but said religion is through the beholder.  He said he was brought up that way, but that he was also brought up with love.

It is simple for Taffel. The one thing he wants people to remember about him and his story is to not hate one another.

“Don’t hate,” Taffel said. “Love the person that is nice to you. Don’t like the person that don’t like you – walk away.  With intelligent people you can reason. Without people with intelligence you can’t reason.”