The two provocateurs who approached the group at the Ravensbrück concentration camp in Germany at the end of October knew what they were doing. What they probably didn't realize was that they helped cement the very reason the group was there in the first place. The common denominator of most, if not all, Holocaust education efforts is to teach that the tragedy and its underlying causes must never be forgotten or repeated and that the Jews will never again become defenseless victims of genocide. Those two men drove home that point succinctly.

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The delegation visiting the camp was from March of the Living UK, which was on its first educational journey since the outbreak of the coronavirus. The organization had wanted to commemorate the 75th anniversary of the liberation of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp by British forces, but the pandemic prevented the delegation from traveling until now. The delegation, which included four Holocaust survivors and about 80 participants – Jews and non-Jews, aged 19 to 90 – visited Berlin, Wannsee, Ravensbrück, and Bergen-Belsen.

The stark juxtaposition of the pastoral German countryside with its lakes and trees to the horror that took place in the nearby concentration camps remains mind-boggling. From Wannsee to Ravensbrück to Bergen-Belsen, it seems the Nazis always chose the most beautiful places to plan the genocide of, inter, or kill innocent people.

The Holocaust survivors who led the delegation were Mala Tribich, Eve Kugler, Alfred Garwood, and Harry (Chaim) Olmer, all of whom live in Britain and most of whom have taken part in several March of the Living UK delegations to Poland in the past.

Tribich, 90, returned to Ravensbrück concentration camp for the first time since she was imprisoned there for two-and-a-half months from December 1944 to February 1945 when she was 14 years old. She related her experience there. "There is a list with my name on it in this camp. It took us a number of days to arrive by train. We had to strip, and our clothing was taken away. Our heads were shaved. We went through cold, communal showers."

She recalled seeing soldiers standing on each side as they undressed and described how she "nearly died of embarrassment. I'll never forget that horrible moment," she said,

"We all looked the same," she continued. "It really did something to our souls. It's very difficult to describe what it feels like to be stripped of your personality. We somehow didn't feel human anymore. It was such a shock to our system. Within seconds, they took our identity; this is one of the hardest moments I can remember. One of the effects it had on us was to lose hope, and without hope, there is no survival. My aunt Frania Klein died within a short time. My best friend Pema died soon after that. I also cannot forget the cold that penetrated our bones. There was no way to warm up. The winter in Germany was freezing. People died next to me from cold and hunger."

Tribich said that "it hurts a lot to be back, but I admit I had to do it, even if only to remember the victims. I feel that if we do not mention them, they will be forgotten, as if they never lived. As the generations go by, this is the way to make sure the victims are not forgotten, and the memory continues. I am hopeful... that they will never be forgotten."

'We died several times, I think'

Scott Saunders, chairman of March of the Living UK, explained to JNS that one of the elements that makes the organization unique is that it invites participants who are post-high school, which means the trip can focus on deeper analysis and a more intellectual thought process. "It's more nuanced because the audience is older," he said. "It's a different discussion."

Saunders also believes that the role of the educator is supremely important, and for that reason, he believes in bringing more educators to lead smaller groups, as opposed to having large groups and few educators. That ratio, according to Saunders, makes for a more meaningful trip for the participants because the groups are more intimate and the discussions deeper.

Earlier in the day, the delegation visited the Berlin-Grunewald station from which the Nazis deported many of Berlin's Jews. The delegation also visited the site of the infamous Wannsee Conference where the Nazis planned the systematic destruction of European Jewry.

The delegation then visited the site of the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in part because it was liberated by British soldiers and because two of the survivors on the trip survived the camp.

Tribich was transferred from Ravensbrück to Bergen-Belsen in February 1945, just two months before liberation.

She recalled her experience.

"They walked us into the camp and what we saw was the smoke, and there was a terrible smell. And through that smoke, you saw people who were really skeletons. And they were shuffling along like zombies. They would collapse and die. You could be speaking to someone, and she would literally drop dead in front of you. There were dead bodies all over the place. There were piles of naked, twisted, decaying corpses. It was a horrific sight."

When asked whether she remembers the liberation, she said: "I was ill with typhus, and I remember lying on my upper bunk by the window in this children's home and – you know with typhus you're unconscious most of the time; it is a terrible illness. I remember opening my eyes and I could see people running, and I didn't know where they were running or why. But all I could think was how do they have the strength to run?"

Asked how she had the courage to live, she replied, "I don't know how to answer the question. We died several times, I think. I had at least five really lucky escapes, and I know some places where my memorial would be."

During the visit, a ceremony was held with the participation of Col. Dickie Winchester, Royal Artillery, representing the role of the British Army in the liberation of Bergen-Belsen. Winchester was joined by Lt. Col. Simon Ledger (Ret.) of the 13th/18th Royal Hussars, the lead Armoured Regiment nearby in 1945 that was informed of the horror of Bergen-Belsen. Their Reconnaissance Troop was sent to assess the camp. Both men laid wreaths as representatives of the British Army.

They noted, "This place is of deep importance to us … . On behalf of the British Army and our unit that liberated the camp, we are proud to return here today along with Holocaust survivors who were liberated from Bergen-Belsen and later moved to live in Britain."

"Spending time at this camp has had a huge impact on my life. Today, I am moved beyond words. Seeing the young people on this trip is so inspiring," Ledger told the delegation.

Garwood, one of the survivors on the trip, was a small child in Bergen-Belsen: "I was born into the war and was almost 4 years old when I was liberated. Children were with their mothers, and I survived in part because my mother managed to breastfeed me. It was a miracle. There were a lot of children in the camp. We played near the corpses. We suffered quietly. The ones who cried were killed. My friends died next to me. I'm coming back here today to tell the story of myself, my family and many victims. That memory will never be forgotten."

As the group left Bergen-Belsen, Tribich said, "I have now completed the cycle of visiting the most horrible places in my life."

Saunders noted that "accompanying the survivors to Germany after all these years was essential. Bergen-Belsen holds an important and dark place in British history, and today, we honored the survivors and the British armed forces involved in their liberation. We have spent time in Germany exploring the rise of Nazism and how even in one of the most cultured countries in the world, hatred went unchecked and led to one of the worst atrocities in human history."

Holocaust education 'in transition all the time'

While these types of delegations and trips are essential to keeping the memory of the Holocaust alive and relevant, the topic of Holocaust denial and Holocaust education has become increasingly politicized. Educators and historians are faced with the challenge of ensuring the details of the Holocaust do not become distorted and that its lessons are not forgotten.

Esther, a non-Jewish native of the United Kingdom who participated in the delegation to Germany, explained to JNS how she began to study the Holocaust and listen to survivor testimonies and eventually joined a March of the Living UK trip to Poland and had who she described as "the most amazing educator."

That experience convinced her to pursue Holocaust studies and to work in it in a professional capacity.

She said the biggest challenge of Holocaust memorialization and commemoration is "the fact that we eventually will not have living survivors."

"Something that is scary to me is the distortion of the Holocaust and not just denial. It's really hard to believe what happened there, and it is very moving to hear a survivor tell their story. You get a real emotional connection to it, and then you can start to envision or imagine what happened so it gives it gravitas. The challenge for educators is how do you bring someone who did not experience it to Holocaust sites [like Bergen-Belsen where there are barely any traces of the original camp] that will inevitably begin to look more like big open spaces and then connect to history? If people cannot believe it, that leaves the Holocaust open to distortion," she said.

Esther invited her German friend named Eva to assist March of the Living UK during its trip through Germany.

Eva explained that she works a lot with different groups and with different narratives and that joining this delegation was "super interesting."

She explained that "as a German, you say, 'Oh, we own this topic; we know everything.' And suddenly you realize it is not true. There are so many narratives."

Holocaust education is "a work in progress," she said. "People think now it is changing because soon, the witnesses will be gone. But that is not true. It's been in transition all the time."

She explained that she is optimistic about the future of Holocaust education in Germany. "People are sometimes scared that fourth- or fifth-generation Germans might not be interested in the Holocaust because they are so far removed from it, but actually I think that is not the case," she said. "My experience is that they are very interested. They are more open and free to actually engage with the topic because there is no family in the background" telling them to stay away from it.

As an example, Eva said the national archives in Germany have had a manifold increase in requests from young Germans to learn about their family history. "That to me is very optimistic," she said.

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In a statement, the Democrat said she had reconsidered her decision, as part of the settlement of a federal lawsuit that Hikind had brought against her this year.

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"Mr. Hikind has a First Amendment right to express his views and should not be blocked for them," she said. "In retrospect, it was wrong and improper and does not reflect the values I cherish. I sincerely apologize for blocking Mr. Hikind."

Hikind, a former New York state Assemblyman, said he was blocked from Ocasio-Cortez's @AOC campaign account, which has 5.7 million followers, after he criticized her comments comparing US-Mexico border detention camps to concentration camps.

Hikind was pleased with the representative's comments. "I couldn't ask for much more at this point," he said. "She never apologizes."

According to the New York Post, Hikind on Monday invited the congresswoman to speak personally with Holocaust survivors.

"Let the survivors share with her what a concentration camp means to a survivor of the Holocaust," he said, adding that he hoped it would be the beginning of a dialogue between himself and Ocasio-Cortez.

Hikind had filed his lawsuit on First Amendment grounds this year. It came after a federal appeals panel had said US President Donald Trump couldn't block people who criticized him from his Twitter account.

That panel said the majority of Trump's comments on his account were official and by blocking someone critical of him, he was silencing them and violating the First Amendment.

Ocasio-Cortez uses her Twitter account to engage with people in a number of ways, including on policy.

She said she reserves the right to block people from her account who engage in harassment.

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The concrete memorial in Berlin's Tiergarten Park, near the memorial of the Jewish victims of the Holocaust, features a window into which visitors can look and view a video of a same-sex couple kissing.

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Police said on Monday that security guards reported that overnight the window had been painted over.

Police currently have no suspects and wouldn't say whether there was surveillance video of the crime.

Nazi Germany declared homosexuality an aberration that threatened the German race and sent thousands of gays to concentration camps.

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Carr is a well-known pro-Israel figure in California, having served as the Los Angeles deputy district attorney before making an unsuccessful 2014 bid on the Republican ticket for Congress in the Democrat-heavy LA 33rd district. His wife, Dahlia, is a physician, and he flies every weekend from Washington, DC, to spend Shabbat with his family, for whom he sometimes cooks the Iraqi specialties from his childhood. Carr also served as the international president of Alpha Epsilon Pi (AEPi), the Jewish fraternity that under his leadership fought anti-Semitism on college campuses in North America and Europe.

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JNS caught up with him over the phone while he was in London in early July to find out more about his work combatting this "vile poison" in America and beyond.

Q: What kind of work do you do with your European partners?

"I do a lot of work with our European partners because anti-Semitism is a global problem. It's increasing everywhere in the world, certainly in Europe, but also in the United States and Latin America and elsewhere, so I am here to represent the United States in meetings with Jewish leaders in London and to make sure that the Jewish community in the United Kingdom understands that the United States supports them and is standing with them. That's the same message I conveyed in my trips that I've made so far to Eastern and Central Europe, and I'll be going to Western Europe shortly as well. So, that is the message to the Jewish community.

"Then, in bilateral meetings with government leaders, we work together to improve the situation for the Jewish community and to advance our shared interest in combating anti-Semitism – and that is a shared interest because it's very important to remember that anti-Semitism isn't only about protecting the Jewish community, [it's] about guaranteeing the health of the society and of the country itself. The history of anti-Semitism is that it destroys every society that embraces it. That's why US President Donald Trump always calls it a 'vile poison.'"

Q: Your counterpart in Germany, Felix Klein, drew criticism when he announced that Jews should be advised not to wear their kippot everywhere in Germany. What is your reaction to such an advisory?

"Well, I understand why somebody would want to take whatever measures are necessary to keep people safe. However, I don't think the response to anti-Semitism should ever be the hiding of the Jewish community or the advice to Jews that they hide who they are. If that's what Jews have to do in the face of anti-Semitism, then we've lost the fight. And so, I think Jews have every right to express themselves Jewishly, and that means do it in a public way.

If observant Jews want to wear a kipah in public, they should wear a kipah in public, and it's the job of the society to keep them safe. The onus shouldn't be on them to hide and protect themselves that way."

Q: What do you think about the German Bundestag vote to brand BDS as anti-Semitism?

"Movements that seek to suffocate the one Jewish country out of existence through economic boycotts – that is anti-Semitism in its unvarnished manifestation. And this is a very, very important thing that we have to realize. I want to compliment and thank the Bundestag for doing that, and I hope Germany will follow up on that decision and take the actions necessary when it sees examples of BDS and examples of anti-Israel hatred.

For example, the designation of Hezbollah as a terrorist organization, it will be my hope that Germany will designate Hezbollah in all its forms as a terrorist organization."

Q: In the United States, are there any areas of priority to tackle when it comes to sources or venues of anti-Semitism?

"First of all, when it comes to the sources of anti-Semitism, I'm very careful not to rank them. The reason I don't rank them in importance is because of the political climate we're in, in terms of polarization, and anti-Semitism is often weaponized for political purposes. I think that hurts the fight.

I say this at every opportunity I can: Jew-hatred is Jew-hatred, and it's evil, and it doesn't matter if it comes from the ethnic supremacist right, from the vicious anti-Zionist left or from radical Islam. It's evil regardless of where it comes from, and we need to fight all of it. Jew-hatred in all its forms needs to be combated, and it's my job to combat it.

But I will say that in the United States the place that is, I think, an urgent location is the college campus. College campuses have boiled over in anti-Semitic vitriol. Many, and by no means all, US college campuses have become hostile learning environments for Jewish students.

That is not only morally wrong and unpleasant; it's also illegal – a violation of the Civil Rights Act."

Q: How would you respond to accusations that a divisive atmosphere under President Trump and some of his rhetoric may have empowered the gunmen of the Tree of Life Synagogue in Pittsburgh and at Chabad of Poway, Calif.?

"I don't think there's any basis to that at all. Anti-Semitism has been rising for several years now, and President Trump, to his great credit and to my great pride, has made combating anti-Semitism a central focus of his. He speaks about it often.

He spent considerable time in his State of the Union Address, which is – my goodness, the most prominent, visible speech the president makes all year – talking about anti-Semitism. Every time he mentions anti-Semitism, he refers to it as a 'vile poison.' He talks of the need to remove it from our midst, and he made what many have said is an unprecedented statement by any leader any time in history – a non-Jewish leader, that is – and he made this statement right after the Pittsburgh shooting at a 'Make America Great Again' rally in Illinois: 'If you seek the destruction of the Jews, we will seek your destruction.' And that promise by a leader, by a world leader, I had people who follow this tell me that this has never been said in history."

So that's President Trump, and then look at the people around him: Vice President [Mike] Pence couldn't be stronger on this issue. My boss, US Secretary of State [Mike] Pompeo, this is a central focus of his: combating anti-Semitism. He spent his AIPAC speech talking about anti-Semitism. Also saying, and I quote: 'Let me go on the record: Anti-Zionism is anti-Semitism,' which no previous administration has said.

You could not possibly put together a team that feels this more deeply, and that has taken steps in favor of the Jewish community or has been stronger. So, I just think that that accusation reflects a political bias."

Q: Can you tell us about specific actions or policies that are being taken on the ground?

"Sure. There've been increases to budgets at the federal and state level to provide security to Jewish communities.

Second, I have been appointed, and I've been given a very broad mandate and incredible support. I'll tell you that my team is larger by an order of magnitude than that any of my predecessors' in this role. So, I've been given the green light to really pursue this with the full force of the administration.

Third, we have made requests of our allies and partners on specific issues regarding the Jewish communities and their countries, and these are not minor requests. That's my job.

When I represent the United States on this issue, I sit down with foreign governments, and I compliment them on all the great things they're doing, and very often, there are great things they're doing, and I say: 'Well, on these issues, can we fix this?' And I'll tell you that some of my requests have already been complied with.

And so, there is an absolute mandate that we should not only contain anti-Semitism, but roll it back. It's not sufficient to stop its growth. The idea is we want to roll this back, and we're focusing on every region in the world, as I was asked to do.

There is increasing focus on college campuses. And this is something that also is unprecedented. The Department of Education issued a formal definition of the Jewish people as an ethnic group. Of course, one would think: 'Well, what's new in that? Of course, the Jewish people are an ethnic group.'

Yes, the Jewish people are an ethnic group, but it had not been defined as such by the Department of Education. That definition and issuing that definition is the prerequisite for triggering federal law and the Civil Rights Act in terms of obligating universities to create a fair and welcoming educational environment for ethnic minorities. Now that Jews are defined as an ethnic minority, the Department of Education has lined up all the legal requirements to force campuses to end what is going on, which is really to create a hostile educational environment for Jewish and pro-Israel students."

Q: Do you have close ties with Israel, and do you work with Israeli leaders? 

"I work with Israeli leaders all the time. I've made more than one trip to Israel since I was appointed. We meet, and we have full cooperation with a number of ministries that monitor and focus on anti-Semitism. Of course, that includes the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, but also the Ministry of Strategic Affairs and the Ministry of Diaspora Affairs. Those three ministries do enormous work on global anti-Semitism, and we work with them very closely. And that's another example of the great partnership between the United States and Israel.

And when I spoke about policies, I focused on Jewish communities, but, of course, what this administration has done to support and strengthen and protect the State of Israel is also unprecedented, and that's also part of the fight against anti-Semitism because the hatred of Israel is the hatred of the Jewish people."

Q: How you are enjoying this post?

"Immensely. I'm grateful every day that I have the chance to represent the United States of America in the fight against anti-Semitism throughout the world and the fight to protect the Jewish people throughout the world."

Reprinted with permission from JNS.org.

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This weekend, the New York Times published an ad which read, "Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, stop desecrating the Holocaust."

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The ad features a picture of Jewish concentration camp prisoners next to a picture of the congresswoman, captioned: "Six million Jews were murdered in the concentration camps of Nazi Germany. By comparing the United States to the Third Reich, Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez disgraces their memory, our country and herself."

Ocasio-Cortez, who is considered a rising star in the Democratic Party, has a strong socialist agenda and is the leader of an unofficial movement that targets President Donald Trump. She frequently attacks the US administration for its treatment of illegal immigrants, claiming that holding them in detention facilities near the US-Mexico border is "illegal."

"Ocasio-Cortez's trivialization of the greatest systematic murder in history is grotesque and repulsive," read a statement from Rabbi Shmuley Boteach and his organization, which claims to promote universal Jewish values.

The congresswoman's remarks also drew strong condemnation from the Yad Vashem Holocaust Museum, which suggested that Ocasio-Cortez "learn about the concentration camps."

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This comes after the congresswoman said in an Instagram video on Monday that the United States is "running concentration camps on our southern border," in reference to the Trump administration's policies regarding illegal immigrants.

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Dominik Tarczyński, vice president of European Conservatives in the European Council, tweeted on Thursday the open letter to the congresswoman.

"With this letter, I am formally inviting @AOC to come to Poland, where Adolf Hitler set up the worst chain of concentration camps the world has ever seen, so that she may see that scoring political points with enflamed rhetoric is unacceptable in our contemporary Western societies," he tweeted.

"As you should be aware, the National Socialist German Workers' Party [the Nazi party], who led Germany, were responsible for the darkest period in my country's and our whole continent's history by devising a chain of concentration camps in order to exterminate those who they believed were subhuman, or a threat to their imperialistic machinations. This included both Jewish Poles and non-Jewish Poles, and as a result we lost 6 million of our citizens," wrote Tarczyński.

He then explained that Germany set up the camps in Poland after invading in September 1939.

"It has caused a deep wound that persists on our proud Polish and European history that we must all deal with every single day, and that we reaffirm to one another can never be forgotten and never allowed to happen again," wrote Tarczyński.

"This is why when someone cheapens the history or uses it for political point-scoring, we become agitated and upset," he continued. "I understand that there are heightened tensions in your politics right now, but I would urge severe caution in attempting to leverage phrases such as 'concentration camp' for political ends. It will lead nowhere good."

Tarczyński offered Ocasio-Cortez the chance to visit Auschwitz-Birkenau, Treblinka, Belzec, Sobibor, and Majdanek.

Treblinka, Belzec, and Sobibor were solely death camps, while Majdanek and Auschwitz-Birkenau served as concentration camps with gas chambers.

Ocasio-Cortez has yet to respond to the invitation. Her spokesperson, Corbin Trent, did not immediately respond to a request for comment.

In her social-media remarks, the freshman congresswoman said she wants to talk to those "who are concerned enough with humanity to say that 'never again' means something."

"The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing, and we need to do something about it," she continued.

Ocasio-Cortez warned, "We are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency."

"I don't use those words lightly," she continued. "I don't use those words to just throw bombs. I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it's very difficult to say that."

In response to her remarks, Yad Vashem, Israel's official Holocaust remembrance museum, tweeted: "@AOC Concentration camps assured a slave labor supply to help in the Nazi war effort, even as the brutality of life inside the camps helped assure the ultimate goal of "extermination through labor."

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In an interview with i24News, Elan Carr, the US envoy against anti-Semitism and a keynote speaker at the event, spoke of the need to fight what he called the three pillars of anti-Semitism: the hatred of Jews on the far Right, the far Left and in radical Islam.

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Carr is working with European leaders and global partners to fight against anti-Semitism while also moving to change educational material in Arab countries.

Addressing the ayatollah regime in Iran, Carr said he hoped to see "a united front against Iranian mischief – the mischief of the Iranian regime I should add, not the Iranian people but this cruel Iranian regime ... a united front against its mischief, its violence, its destabilization and its doctrinal anti-Semitism."

Carr also spoke out against Congresswoman Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez's (D-N.Y.) recent remarks in which she compared the detention of migrants into the US to the running of concentration camps.

"It is a staggering insensitivity to what was done to the Jewish people during the Holocaust, and a staggering insensitivity to American virtues and American values," Carr said.

"To even mention the United States in the same sentence as Nazi Germany, or for that matter to compare the state of Israel to Nazi Germany as we see anti-Semites do on a regular basis, is profoundly offensive," he said.

This article was originally published by i24NEWS.

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In her social media remarks, the freshman congresswoman said, "The fact that concentrations camps are now an institutionalized practice in the Home of the Free is extraordinarily disturbing. … We are losing to an authoritarian and fascist presidency. I don't use those words lightly. … I use that word because that is what an administration that creates concentration camps is. A presidency that creates concentration camps is fascist, and it's very difficult to say that."

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On Tuesday, she posted on Twitter, "This administration has established concentration camps on the southern border of the United States for immigrants, where they are being brutalized with dehumanizing conditions and dying."

In a hit against Republicans, Ocasio-Cortez added: "And for the shrieking Republicans who don't know the difference: concentration camps are not the same as death camps. Concentration camps are considered by experts as 'the mass detention of civilians without trial.' And that's exactly what this administration is doing."

Republican Congresswoman Liz Cheney (R-Wyo.) responded to Ocasio-Cortez by tweeting: "Please @AOC do us all a favor and spend just a few minutes learning some actual history. 6 million Jews were exterminated in the Holocaust. You demean their memory and disgrace yourself with comments like this."

Cheney later added, "Happy to help educate you @AOC. You could start with the @yadvashem survivor testimonies. I also recommend Night by Elie Wiesel. Here's an Amazon link to make it easy for you to purchase."

Several other pro-Israel and Jewish groups condemned Ocasio-Cortez's remarks.

"Six million Jews were killed in the Holocaust. It is disgraceful for Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez to compare our nation's immigration policies to the horrors carried out by the Nazis. We would hope that Rep. Ocasio-Cortez knows better, but sadly, she does not," said the Republican Jewish Coalition on Tuesday.

"Before Representative Ocasio-Cortez makes a statement like that, I would suggest that she actually visit Auschwitz, and try to understand what actually took place there," Endowment for Middle East Truth founder and president Sarah Stern told JNS. "Her statement devalued the horrors of the Holocaust and of the 6 million who were systematically and purposely murdered. Statements such as these are ill-informed and flippant, and simply illustrate her vast ignorance."

"AOC should ask Holocaust survivors and ex-GIs who liberated Dachau what that charnel House was like," Rabbi Abraham Cooper, associate dean of the Simon Wiesenthal Center, told JNS. "She is insulting victims of genocide."

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Sophie Tajch Klisman greeted Doug Harvey with a hug and thanked the 95-year-old for taking part in the liberation of the Salzwedel camp, telling him: "You gave me my life."

Harvey said he "can't take credit for the entire 15,000 guys in" his 84th Infantry Division, to which Klisman replied: "But you were one of them ... and I'm very fortunate to meet you."

The two then went inside Klisman's house in Commerce Township, sat on the living room couch and chatted with reporters about their experiences during World War II.

"They rolled in with tanks and came and opened the gates. And they were telling us: 'The war is over. You are free. You survived,'" Klisman said.

"So, that kind of feeling. We were barely alive. I mean, we were all like skeletons. A lot of the soldiers that looked at us, they cried."

Harvey, of nearby Sterling Heights, learned about Klisman while reading a recent story in The Detroit News about her plan to return to Poland and Israel as part of the "From Holocaust to Independence" mission of the Friends of the Israel Defense Forces.

The two were able to connect and they met in person on Monday. Klisman, 89, returned from the trip over the weekend.

In addition to Salzwedel, Klisman, along with her sister Felicia, survived the Auschwitz and Bergen-Belsen concentration camps.

The sisters immigrated to the U.S. in 1949, settling in the Detroit area. The rest of their family were killed during the war.

Klisman, surrounded by photos of her children and grandchildren, told Harvey that he and his fellow soldiers "gave a lot of prisoners, the survivors, life" and pointed out that "if it wouldn't be for guys like" him, she wouldn't have her "beautiful family."

"We defeated Hitler. And the Jewish people will survive and thrive. Hard to describe, hard to describe," said Klisman, who on several occasions during the meeting removed her glasses to dry her eyes.

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