On Feb. 19, Park had an opportunity to listen to Holocaust survivor Manfred Gabler share his story. His parents fled Nazi Germany to Milan, Italy when his mother was pregnant with him. When the Nazis began taking over Italy, his family sought sanctuary in a ghetto neighborhood in Shanghai, China, one of the few countries allowing refuge to Jewish people. There, amidst challenging conditions, he spent his first nine years of childhood with his younger brother, parents and Chinese citizens whom his family had good relationships with.

87-year-old survivor Manfred “Manny” Gabler said due to his young age at the time of the Holocaust, living under horrible circumstances was his reality and he didn’t understand the depth of the hardship he was going through.

“As a child, you just live in the moment. So I didn’t know any better, you’re supposed to be cold and hungry. It’s not something you learn,” Gabler said.

According to sophomore Hannora Crouse, she gained knowledge of how Gabler survived and lived throughout the Holocaust in China. She said a takeaway from the experience is that she should be a storyteller to pass on his history because the Holocaust is something that should never happen again.

“I (found it interesting) learning about how he escaped and his life in Shanghai, and I didn’t know that Jewish people went to Asia and other continents. Another thing (I learned is) to tell stories of the past so history doesn’t repeat itself,” Crouse said.

According to senior Micah Schoenberger who organized the event, he finds Gabler’s narrative unimaginable. He said he feels a lot of gratitude when he thinks about his childhood compared to Gabler’s hardships.

“Thinking about how I’m grateful to go to my house every single night, and know I have food and a place to sleep, and then him being on a ship traveling across the world is a crazy feeling, especially at such a young age, and I can never imagine (that), but I can only tell to other people how crazy that actually is to do,” Schoenberger said.

Gabler said when bomb attacks occurred, because they didn’t have many safe shelters, they would remain in their buildings and pray the next bomb wouldn’t be for them. He said they would place prayers inside the door frames providing them with faith and blessings. According to him, when he returned to the building where he lived, seeing those mezuzahs brought tears to his eyes.

“In a Jewish household, you have a mezuzah in the door frame, and there’s prayers rolled up inside it that bless the house. Those nail holes, when I went back in 1998 were still in the door frame. I broke into tears when I saw that,” Gabler said.

Schoenberger said on a trip he took to Poland, he saw an unidentified photograph whose entire community was killed. According to him, that emphasized the immense impact and scale behind six million deaths.

“I had the privilege to go to Poland this summer and go to the concentration camps. One thing I remember is there was a picture of somebody, and after the Holocaust, they couldn’t identify it. So, if you think about how many people you know that could look at a picture of you and say, ‘Oh that’s me.’ This person, literally everybody around them had gotten killed to the point where there was a picture, but nobody actually knew who it was,” Schoenberger said. “People say six million, the number is thrown around a lot and there’s different ways to measure it, but for me that put it into perspective because if there’s a picture of me, and if everybody around me who knew that picture was me got killed, I exist, but do I really exist? Nobody actually knows who I am. People think of six million as a number, but actually realizing the atrocity of that number and how big it is, you can’t even get your head around it.”

Gabler said it is crucial to be aware of and learn about the Holocaust. According to him, nothing like the Holocaust must happen again because it inflicted so much pain and suffering on people, including his family. He said there are still many conflicts that lead to mass casualties.

“All of my family went to the gas chambers. So it’s important that people learn this and make sure it never happens again. Unfortunately, you know, there was Rwanda, there’s the Gaza Strip, and people need to grow up,” Gabler said.

According to Crouse, there is a major significance in learning and having awareness about the awful history because Holocaust denial exists, so being able to hear a Holocaust survivor’s story is crucial.

“It’s important to understand things that have happened in the past so we can learn from them and move forward in a better way. Especially under our current political climate, there are a lot of people who think (the Holocaust) didn’t happen or that it wasn’t real,” Crouse said. “So, having the story (of a Holocaust survivor) to share is super important, and discussing with others.”

Schoenberger said he is very thankful for Gabler’s willingness and ability to share because it takes a lot of courage to do so.

“We’re grateful that Manny could come here and speak with us, most (Holocaust survivors) have passed away, or are too old. It’s really hard to share his story and think about things that happened to him. I was really grateful that he was willing to speak and able to speak and share such a unique story,” Schoenberger said.

According to Gabler, he has little memory of the impact the Holocaust had on him because he was so young when it occurred, but after the Holocaust, he became an entrepreneur and lived a happy life.

“I was one year old when we got to Shanghai, so I don’t have much memory from that, but after the Holocaust, I learned to be an entrepreneur because I just couldn’t work for anybody, and I had a pretty good life,” Gabler said.

This story was originally published on The Echo on February 28, 2025.