David Lenga, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, likes to share his story with as many people as possible to help combat rising antisemitism worldwide.
In a Zoom interview with the Journal, Lenga explained that he had a “wonderful life” in the city of Łódź, Poland before the Holocaust, where “Jewish life was vibrant.” And yet, “there was an underlying layer of antisemitism right just beneath the surface,” Lenga said, “and you could feel it.”
Lenga recalled that when he was playing with his non-Jewish friends, they would hurl slurs like “you scabby Jew” or “you G-d d— Jew” whenever he said something that displeased them. He added that at that time, Poland had a quota system restricting the number of Jews accepted into universities, law schools, medical schools and the like.
Lenga attributed that spread of antisemitism in Poland to the churches. “In the churches, the priests were at every opportunity telling their congregants that it is the Jews that are responsible for the death of Christ… and so therefore they need to be punished in accordance to the Bible.” The form of punishment was for the Jews not to be considered as equals of Polish society. Consequently, the Jewish community in Poland started relying on each other instead of on the Polish authorities.
Lenga attributed that spread of antisemitism in Poland to the churches.
“We created an incredible infrastructure of our own organizations,” Lenga said, pointing to the establishment of rabbinical courts as an example — where Jews who were in a dispute would turn to instead of the regular Polish courts — as well as their own schools, orphanages and lending institutions. “We were trying to rely on our own power because we, as a minority in Poland, had no power…. [We] were always small, tiny minorities among huge majorities and [we] were at their mercy.”
Everything seemed to be fine for Lenga and the Jewish community in Łódź until the Nazis invaded Poland on September 1, 1939. On that day, Lenga recalled running errands with his mom in their car when sirens started blaring. An armada of Nazi planes swooped in and unleashed a bevy of machine gun fire onto the population.
“Within seconds, I saw a river of blood on the street,” Lenga said. “I saw body parts flying. I saw screams and yells and panic and people running in every direction into nearby homes to seek shelter, and I was one of them. And I was just so frightened out of my mind, I couldn’t understand it, I couldn’t wrap my head around what had just happened… I was just in total fear.”
Shortly thereafter, the Polish currency became worthless, sparking massive food shortages in a country that normally produced an abundance of food due to fertile land. The result: rations through food coupons.
A few days later, the Nazis took Lenga’s father to the Gestapo headquarters because the Nazis had seized his factory, forcing Lenga’s father to produce leather, fur and clothing for the Nazi army. Lenga’s father said he needed his family with him in order to work properly; the Nazis acquiesced but didn’t allow Lenga and his family to take anything with them. Lenga’s father also quickly learned that the Nazis would only let you live if you were employable, so he requested 50% more employees than he actually needed.
For the next couple of years, Lenga’s family lived within a perimeter established by the Nazis, and they never were allowed to leave — a virtual ghetto. “A lot of people died over during those two years because they initiated a deliberate policy of malnutrition,” Lenga said, adding that there were no doctors or medicine available for anyone who fell ill. “That was their implementation of solving the Jewish question, by killing the people this way. But in the meantime, they were squeezing out every ounce of their labor.”
Over time, the Nazis consolidated their ghettos into larger ghettos and began killing the Jews who were unable to work. Lenga described the conditions in the larger ghetto as “horrendous” since it was “tight” and “uncomfortable.” With his father falling ill — so much so that Lenga thought he had his father had died throughout the Holocaust — Lenga’s uncle taught him how to became an adequate tailor, which helped save Lenga’s life numerous times throughout the Holocaust.
Later in 1942, Nazis lined up everyone in the ghetto and separated the able-bodied from those who were unable to work. Lenga’s mother was still able-bodied, but Lenga and his younger siblings were not due to their age. All of those deemed non-able bodied were taken to a warehouse, and miraculously, a big burly man called Lenga to the front and told him to run back to the ghetto, thus sparing his life. The Nazis killed the rest of the Jews in the warehouse.
Unbeknownst to Lenga at the time, his uncle, who headed the factory, was able to pull some strings to save Lenga’s life but was unable to save his brother, as he was too young. Also unbeknownst to Lenga was that his mother had gone back to the warehouse because she didn’t want to be separated from her children. Lenga never saw his mother and siblings again.
Lenga subsequently became suicidal and attempted to jump out of window, only to be thwarted by his aunt. His aunt told him that he could not lose hope, otherwise there truly was nothing. The suicidal thoughts didn’t dissipate, but his aunt continued to watch over him. Lenga said that the fact that he had to work in order to eat ghetto was a “silver lining” “because it made every day go by.” Working made him realize that he had to make do with what he had in order to survive. “So I went on living and working and being hungry all the time.”
Working made him realize that he had to make do with what he had in order to survive.
He noticed that everyone in the ghetto was starving, including children with “swollen bellies.” “We were devoid of human emotions all of a sudden,” Lenga said, adding that everyone had become “zombies” due to the forced malnutrition.
In 1944, the Russian army appeared to be close toward liberating the ghetto, prompting the Nazis to panic. The Nazis forced everyone in the ghetto to be deported to the death camps; Lenga decided to stay behind and hide in the ghetto, thinking that he would soon be freed by the Russians. But if the Nazis caught him hiding, he would be shot on the spot. So Lenga hid, as the sole person remaining in the ghetto, and scavenged for food at night in abandoned buildings.
But Lenga soon realized that the Russians weren’t coming — for political reasons, they decided to pull back on their advancement into Poland. He discovered a hole between the rafters and planks of an abandoned building to hide in for the time being. During a night of scavenging, Lenga found a whole potato and cooked it through traditional wood and fire, which he soon realized was a mistake because the Nazis noticed the smoke. Lenga hid in his hole “and stopped breathing.” Just before the Nazis were on the verge of discovering of him, the sirens blared, signaling an imminent attack, prompting the Nazis to evacuate the building. Lenga called it a “miracle.”
The next day, he saw men in white sweeping the sidewalks; when he asked them who they were, they told Lenga that they were Jews under Nazi orders to sweep out the remains of the ghetto so no one would discover what had happened there. “Only German minds can think of that,” Lenga said. Lenga decided to join them.
After a couple of days, they were put into cattle cars, where they were “squeezed like sardines” for days, Lenga said. When the train stopped, Lenga saw prisoners wearing striped uniforms. He asked one of them if they were in Germany, where the Nazis had said they were going. The prisoner replied: “No, no, no, you’re not. You’re in Auschwitz.”
That was the first time Lenga had ever heard of Auschwitz. When he asked what it was, the prisoner pointed him to a chimney with black smoke coming out of it, and told him, “This is you wind up.” Lenga was in a state of disbelief and said that he didn’t understand, prompting the prisoner to reply, “You will soon.”
Lenga described Auschwitz as “a hermetically closed prison,” as the death camp was surrounded by electric barbed wire and Nazi guards with machine guns and dogs. “There was no escape from Auschwitz.”
After a few days, Lenga was assigned to bring soup to the deemed able-bodied, and he used that opportunity to hide amongst the crowd of able-bodied, which was around 200 men. When cattle cars arrived to take able-bodied men elsewhere, Lenga made sure that he was the first one on board. But the Nazis kept records — once there were 200 people in the car, they cut it off. Lenga could hear someone shouting outside, “But I was selected! I was selected!” to no avail.
“I didn’t know who this man was,” Lenga said. “I had no idea what he looked like. I have no knowledge about this person at all. All I know is I took his place. I tried to save my life. It was the scent of self-preservation, and it drove me. I had no pity, I had no compassion, I had no feeling of regret — all I wanted to do is survive the night.”
Lenga then found himself in Dachau, where “they clean-shaved us, they showered us, they gave us ill-fitted striped clothing, ill-fitted shoes that were taken from other prisoners… it was horrible, it was terrible, but at least I’m still alive.”
All the prisoners at the camp were required to fill out registration forms under the penalty of death; on the form, Lenga claimed he was two years older than he actually was to increase his odds of survival. Lenga was subsequently taken to Kaufering, one of Dachau’s sub-camps, which he said was “basically a slave labor camp.” While at Kaufering, Lenga stood in wet cement while operating machinery that hardened cement. “God forbid I lose my balance or I fall into this wet cement, that’s it, that’s the end of me, and nobody cared.”
Lenga said he was “witnessing deaths by the hundreds” and found that people who were sleeping in the bunks next to him would be dead the next morning. “We just didn’t react. We couldn’t. Our heart, our soul was petrified. These were the conditions.”
“We just didn’t react. We couldn’t. Our heart, our soul was petrified. These were the conditions.”
By the spring of 1945, the Allied Forces had gained momentum, prompting the Nazis to eliminate their southern death camps and move the prisoners in Kaufering toward Bergen-Belson. A couple of hours into the train ride, the train suddenly stopped in Bavaria, as did an adjacent train that was full of weapons. Overhead were U.S. jet planes firing machine guns at both trains, thinking that both were military trains. “So many people died because [there was] no roof in our train,” Lenga said. He and two of his friends decided to jump out of the cattle cars and into the nearby forest, prompting the Americans to stop the raid.
The war was coming to end, but Lenga and the other prisoners didn’t know, as they were surrounded by Nazi soldiers in the middle of the forest for a few days. One day, the prisoners woke up to find that the Nazi soldiers had completely abandoned them for unknown reasons.
Lenga and two of his friends wandered through the forest and into the countryside, and discovered what appeared to be shelter, only to find it “swarmed with German military.” Lenga, who was fluent in German, explained to a Nazi official that they were abandoned in the forest and were wondering what to do next, prompting the official to tell them to walk back to where they came from. As Lenga and his friends walked out, a German farm owner told that the war was almost over and offered to let them stay at the farm. While at the farm, they were liberated by American forces, who brought them to a refugee camp.
After the war, Lenga decided to move to Sweden, as he didn’t think that anyone he knew in Łódź had survived. In Sweden, he met his wife, who is also a Holocaust survivor. He later found out that his father had survived and reunited with him in 1953 — almost 12 years since they were separated. Lenga and his family moved to Los Angeles when the Korean War broke out due to fears of the Soviet Union spreading to Sweden.
Lenga added that while socialist Sweden was “wonderful,” there were too many restrictions to open a business, whereas the United States gave him the opportunity to spread his wings and work as a designer and a real estate investor. Today he has three children, seven grandchildren and seven great-grandchildren. He continues to talk to audiences about his experience during the Holocaust.
“My experiences are not just a flash in the pan,” Lenga said. “The lessons learned from [them] are as valid today as they ever were, unfortunately. We see what is happening with antisemitism. We see what’s happened with the invasion of the Capital, we see what’s happening all around us, the tremendous rise in antisemitism. We try to combat it by educating the younger generation. At least they should know what happened and try do everything in their power to prevent it from happening again, because it’s going to touch everybody.
“I said to them, ‘You cannot afford to be apathetic. You cannot afford to be indifferent. When you see evil, do something. Speak up. Go to the street. Have placards. Protest. Do everything you can to stop this evil from spreading or gaining power, because if it does, it is like a deadly virus. It may not immediately touch you but if you just let it go… it will eventually touch you.’”
