On May 1, 2008, more than 300 students,
professors, and Edmond residents listened to Holocaust survivor Eliezer Ayalon relate how he spent his teenage years. The Nazis
invaded his native Poland and sent
his entire family to a Jewish ghetto. When the Nazis liquidated
the ghetto, they rounded up his parents, brothers, and sister and sent
them to Triblinka, where they were immediately murdered. Eliezer was lucky,
because he had a work permit and thus was allowed to work
outside the ghetto on the day of the roundup. He didn't want to
leave his mother, but she walked him to the gate and ordered him
to go. The Nazis sent him to five concentration camps over the
next four years. (The first was Plaszow, the one featured in
Spielberg's movie "Schlindler's List." In fact, Spielberg
hired him as a consultant on the set.) He was pretty close
to starvation in 1945 when Patton's army liberated him. After recovering in Italy, he
immigrated to Palestine. Presently, Eliezer works at the
Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum in Israel.
