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Mike Jacobs holds a pair of children's shoes worn by one of the more than 6 million victims of the Holocaust. Jacobs talked about his experiences as a prisoner in Nazi concentration camps during an address to Big Spring High School students Tuesday. (Courtesy photo)
By STEVE REAGAN
Staff Writer
Always remember.
Never forget.
Fight the lie.
Those were the simple, direct lessons Mike Jacobs hopes people learn from the Holocaust.
The Holocaust, Nazi Germany's horrific program of extermination for Jews and other “undesirables,” left millions dead and eradicated centuries of history and culture in Europe, but for Jacobs, it meant something far more personal.
Jacobs — born Mendel Jakubowicz in the small Polish town of Konin in 1925 — spent more than five years in ghettos and concentration camps as a prisoner of the Nazis and lost most of his family to the Holocaust. But Jacobs also knows that another movement is afoot, a revisionist effort to deny the horrors of the Holocaust — and he will not stand for it. As part of a lifelong effort to keep shining a light onto one of history's darkest chapters, Jacobs told his story to Big Spring High School students Tuesday morning. “I want them to remember and never forget what happened,” Jacobs said in his clipped Eastern European accent. “It can happen again if we forget. “Today, you have some people who are saying it never happened, that there were no concentration camps, no ghettos,” he added. “These people are very dangerous. They want future generations to grow up thinking the Holocaust was all a lie. “We need to stand up to these people.” Jacobs was a young teenager when Germany invaded Poland in September 1939. Konin, near the German-Polish border, was overrun quickly and it didn't take long for Nazi officials to begin rounding up Polish Jews. Within two months, Jacobs and his family were loaded onto railroad cars and sent to the ghetto camp at Ostroweic. He subsequently spent time in such infamous concentration camps as Auschwitz and Birkenau. Although he survived, the rest of his family was not so fortunate — his parents and four siblings were killed in the Treblinka concentration camp and another brother died fighting the Germans as a member of the Polish resistance. Aside from the horrors he saw, the worst part of living under the Nazis' heel was the dehumanizing factor, he said. “I remember when they tattooed the (identification) number on my arm,” he said. “The guard told me, 'You're no longer a human being, you're a number.” Despite the terror and degradation he suffered, however, he remained confident he would survive. “I never gave up hope. That's what kept me alive,” he said. “As long as you have that belief, you can keep going.” Early in 1945, Jacobs was transferred to the Mathausen-Gusen II camp in Austria, where he was eventually liberated on May 5 of that year. “It was tremendous,” he said of his liberation day, which included the gift of a Hershey bar from an American soldier. “You're finally a free person ... you can walk around just like everyone else.” He was a shopkeeper and teacher for a few years before moving to the United States in 1951, eventually settling in Dallas. Since then, he has established the Dallas Holocaust Memorial and estimates that he speaks to 50 or 60 groups a year, a task he vows to continue doing. “You must remember,” he told the students. “You must never forget. (The Holocaust) is what happens when you become complacent.”
Contact Staff Writer Steve Reagan at 263-7331, ext. 234 or by e-mail at
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