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By HEATHER MCLAUGHLIN
mclaughlin.heather@dailygleaner.com

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Israel Unger remembers when three Soviet Red Army soldiers stood at the foot of the stairs of the flour mill in Tarnow, Poland, on a cold snowy February day.

He was seven years old. His father, who had been a co-owner of the mill before the Nazis marched into Poland and stripped the family of its business holdings, had managed to keep his family safe by hiding them behind a false wall in the attic of the mill.

Unger said he hadn't walked down a set of stairs for two years. He stumbled and landed at the feet of three Soviet soldiers who stood talking to each other, looking over the workshop.

"I put my arms around the boots of the one that was closest to me and I kissed his boots," Unger said. "We were just jubilant and overjoyed. It would be difficult to describe our feeling of relief."

For Unger and many other Jews, remembering the dark days of the Second World War and the Holocaust is the best way to learn from the horrific period in history.

Unger attended the annual Holocaust Memorial Observance at Sgoolai Israel Synagogue in Fredericton on Sunday to pause and remember his early childhood.

"There's that very well-known quote from Santayana that those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it. The Holocaust was the most barbarous, bloodiest event of the 20th century, which in itself was the bloodiest century in history. So we need to learn from it," said Unger, a retired University of New Brunswick professor.

The Ungers fared better in some respects than others in that their nuclear family - father David Unger, wife Hinda, and Unger's brother Charles - all survived.

That, Unger said, was a rarity in the era of Nazi oppression.

Their extended family didn't fare as well.

"I did lose all my uncles and aunts, all grandparents and 13 out of 16 cousins that I had never met, because I was very young at the time and they all perished," Unger said.

Born in 1938, Unger was 18 months old when the Germans smashed into Poland. He was seven when Poland was liberated.

Now in his early 70s, Unger still has vivid memories of many events during that fearful time.

"We know what the Nazis intended. It was really only a question of when, where and how," Unger said. "Even in the flour mill, there was a workshop and that workshop was converted into a garage and repair place for German army trucks and light-armoured vehicles."

From their secret attic hiding place, Unger said they could watch German soldiers.

"We didn't know whether they had come to pick up their truck or whether they had come because somebody had discovered that there were Jews hidden in the attic and had denounced us. We never knew if we would survive until liberation or not. Any strange noise caused fear.''

The family tried to sleep during the day and only move around at night when the mill was empty.

One of Unger's most horrendous childhood memories was witnessing the murder of his mother's father, his grandfather Chaim Fisch.

"My grandfather was an observant, pious Orthodox Jew and two Nazis came into his apartment and ordered him to come with them. And he stood up and reached for his prayer bag ... and tucked it under his arm and he went with them.

"It was a small, upstairs apartment and he came to the staircase and they shoved him or they kicked him or pushed him and he fell down the stairs. As he fell down the staircase, they shot him," Unger said.

Roundups of Jews by the Nazis were routine in their Polish town. Entire families being herded into railway box cars destined for death camps was a brutal fact of his young world.

"I remember being carried in my father's arms on such an occasion. I kept asking my father to say the last prayer with us ... so that we'd go to heaven," Unger said. "I expected to die that day and that being the case, I wanted to go to heaven."

Death eluded the family that day, but there was constant worry and struggle.

A gentile, who sympathized with the family, brought them food once a week until one day he stopped.

"We discovered after the war that he had been taking Jews from Poland to Hungary, which at the time was not under German occupation, and he had been caught at the border and shot.''

"Thereafter, my father would sneak out at night and go to where they milled the flour. He would bring back flour and there was barley and they boiled barley and water and we called that soup and we ate it and we mixed the flour and water and baked it like pita, I guess. And that's what we ate for two years.''

Unger hopes that by sharing stories of the Holocaust, the world will learn.

"Whenever there is a tragedy in most nations, if a bridge collapses, if there's an outbreak of a disease ... then we have an inquiry and we try to find out what caused that tragedy for the benefit of existing and future humanity," Unger said.