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Tarleton hosts Holocaust Survivor as Guest Speaker
Name: Tarleton hosts Holocaust Survivor as Guest SpeakerDate: February 26, 2018Time: 5:30 PM - 5:30 PM CSTEvent Description:Hear Holocaust survivor Max Glauben share his story of courage and survival during a public talk at 5:30 p.m. Monday, Feb. 26, on Tarleton State University’s Stephenville campus.
Hosted by Tarleton’s Department of Psychological Sciences, the event takes place in the ballrooms of the Barry B. Thompson Student. Proceeds benefiting the Holocaust Study Abroad Scholarship.
Seating is limited to 300. The event begins with a light reception at 5 p.m. and guests having a chance to win one of several raffle items before the speaking engagement.
The 88-year-old Dallas resident will provide a first-hand account of his survival through the Holocaust, witnessing the early fighting and the Warsaw Ghetto uprising that occurred in his native Poland.
Max Glauben, born in 1928 as Moniek Glauben to Isaak and Fela Glauben, was reared in a family of newspaper publishers. In 1939, the livelihood of his parents and grandparents was eliminated by the Nazi invasion. A year later, the Warsaw Ghetto was established.
Because the Glauben family already resided within the area designated by the Nazis as the ghetto, they were allowed to stay in place and keep their personal possessions. Outside of the ghetto, Max was able to pass as a non-Jew because of his blond hair and blue eyes. He exchanged family possessions for food, which he smuggled back into the ghetto to help his family and neighbors survive.
In 1943, during the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, the Glauben family hid in an underground shelter, but an informant reported them to the Nazis who later discovered them in hiding. They were then deported to the Majdanek Extermination Camp in Lublin, Poland, and Max was separated from his mother, younger brother and other family members after they were selected for extermination in the gas chambers.
Max and his father were selected for work and sent with a contingent of Jewish prisoners to the Budzin labor camp, a satellite camp of Majdanek, where they labored in an airplane factory. His father, Isaak, was murdered in reprisal for three prisoners who had escaped and, at age 13, Max was on his own.
In 1944, Max was transferred to the Mielec Slave Labor Camp where he worked in the Heinkel airplane factory. It was here that he was tattooed with “KL” on his right forearm—a mark that still exists today. Later, he was taken to the Wieliczka salt mines where the Nazis had established deep underground factories impervious to the allied bombing raids. Due to a lack of work for Max’s unit there, he was sent to the Flossenburg Concentration Camp and, from there, put on a death march to Dachau, Germany.
During the march, Max was liberated by American troops on April 23, 1945. A U.S. lieutenant took young Max under his wing, and he stayed with the soldier’s unit until 1947.
Later that year, he immigrated to the United States and put in the care of the Jewish Children’s Service under the Orphan Law. In 1951, Max was drafted into the U.S. Army, serving until 1953, and spending three years in the reserves.
Today, Max and his wife, Frieda, have three children: Barry, Philip and Shari, along with seven grandchildren. He often claims that it is his story of surviving the Holocaust that gives him energy, and it’s as if his youth, stripped away by the Nazi soldiers, has been tacked to his post-retirement years.
For additional information about the talk, contact Dr. Jamie Borchardt at 254-968-1970 or email borchardt@tarleton.edu.