Kovno's Mechanic

My name is Nicole Schneider and I chose to write about my grandfather, Naftali Schlomowitz, who is my hero. He is a holocaust survivor and the fact that he survived such atrocities is a miracle. For years he never shared his stories, keeping his experiences hidden from his family in order to spare us the grief of learning what happened to him and his family. As time went by, he finally started opening up and sharing his experiences, as painful as it was for him to relive his years in the ghetto and then in the concentration camps. He recounted the details of his years in captivity in the Kovno Ghetto, Kovno Concentration Camp and then Dachau Concentration Camp. He remembered dates, places, German soldiers' names and can tell you how almost every member of his family was murdered. He is an incredibly brave and strong man who decided after liberation to not live in the past but rather help build a new future. He smuggled into Palestine and fought alongside fellow survivors during the War of Independence to help the Jewish people have a homeland of their own: Israel. He married and raised two beautiful daughters with his wife of 57 years. Life was never easy for my grandfather as his life as a teenager was cut short and with it was the lost opportunity to go to school and get a college degree. Instead he taught himself how to work with his hands through trade schools and from watching others. He became a plumber, a factory machine mechanic, and a seamstress. He can do anything with is hands and he is never afraid to learn or try something new. I love him and am so happy that he survived the holocaust. I am so thankful for my grandfather's strength to live and recount his story. I have interviewed him and in this book you will read about his story of survival. I can never imagine going through what my grandfather had to go through. Everybody should learn about the holocaust and discover how hard it was to survive. Thankfully, my grandfather had the strength to survive and the ability to remember all the details so he could tell me his story. I chose to write his story so people can learn about man's inhumanity to mankind and for history never to repeat itself.