The Florida Holocaust Museum in St. Petersburg celebrates its 25th anniversary by releasing — one at a time — 25 oral histories from survivors. The most recent story — Steen Metz’s — takes readers from Metz’s childhood in Odense, Denmark to a concentration camp where his family was imprisoned. Below, we’re publishing parts of his story — to read the story in its entirety, follow the link below the excerpts.
“Steen didn’t know that he or his family were Jewish until they were arrested by the Gestapo in 1943, when Steen was eight years old. He hadn’t been raised in the religious faith or in a Jewish community, and was confused by the Nazi persecution.
“When Steen was around five years old, the Nazis invaded Denmark. Because of Germany’s strong military power, Denmark put up little resistance. The Nazis occupied Denmark for five years, but for the first three-and-a-half years, life remained relatively unchanged for Steen and his family: he continued going to public school while his father practiced law. The government of Denmark continued functioning under Nazi rule. There was little change at first, because Germany desired to maintain the country for its strong agricultural market and location as a transportation hub. ‘I still can see those ugly, green uniforms that they were wearing,’ Steen says, ‘and I still get the chills when I see pictures of them.'”
“By September of 1943, most Jewish citizens in Denmark had gone into hiding. Steen, who was eight at the time, recalls that the Danish were extremely helpful in the effort to hide the Jews from Nazi officers. He calls these people “upstanders,” people who didn’t stand by as spectators or bystanders and instead made an effort to do what they saw as right. Steen remains extremely proud of his Danish heritage for this reason.
“However, the heroism of the Danish resistance brought further consequences. In the fall of 1943, Nazi Germany was reaching a tipping point. They began cutting telephone lines, which disconnected Steen and his family from any outside communication. Soon after, on October 2, a knock sounded on their door. Steen’s father answered it, and the Gestapo came in and arrested the family. The Gestapo specifically did this on a Jewish holiday, to ensure that most Jews were in their homes during the round-ups. ‘I learned, many many years later,’ Steen says, ‘they were not allowed to break down the door. So sometimes, although you can’t look back, you wonder what would have happened if he [his father] hadn’t answered the door.’
“The family had thirty minutes to prepare to leave. Steen and his mother were allowed to go by the bakery, with the Gestapo still waiting at the apartment, to buy food for the journey. Steen, not entirely certain of what was happening, played with other kids at the bakery while his mother got bread. The baker gave them plenty, knowing what was happening. Steen later learned that while he and his mother were there, the baker offered to help the two of them escape capture. His mother declined the offer, fearing what would happen to her husband if they vanished and reluctant to endanger the baker.
“That day, the family was herded into box cars, which Steen refers to as ‘cattle cars.’ The car was filthy inside, and Steen and his family spent three days and nights inside it. Since Steen didn’t know he was Jewish at the time, he was all the more confused about what was going on. He was frightened, and his parents equally so; they never thought their situation would come to this.
“The inside of the car was completely dark, with no benches, blankets, food, or drink provided. Since Steen was only eight years old he was small enough to lie down, but older people had to stand. Steen’s family had food from the bakery and many people brought sandwiches, which were sometimes shared amongst the group. Steen and his family didn’t know anyone else in the car, which made the atmosphere extremely tense. He found out much later that one person in a neighboring cattle car committed suicide, and many others brought poisonous pills for themselves, though they didn’t use them.
“At the end of the horrific journey they arrived at the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in German-occupied Czechoslovakia, present-day Czech Republic. Back in Denmark, the Gestapo told Steen’s family to bring money and jewelry with them, which was taken from them upon exiting the boxcar. They were then separated into men, women, and children. At this point, Steen was separated from his father. Despite horribly low odds, Steen’s mother managed to convince the Nazis to allow Steen to stay with her in the women’s section. This was the case for a very small number of other children, but most were taken to the children’s section of the camp, away from their parents.
“At the camp, Steen was able to play soccer with the few other children who stayed with their mothers. ‘We didn’t have a real soccer field,’ he recalled. ‘We had a gravel field, and we didn’t get a real soccer ball, obviously, but the mothers put some clothes together and some rags and tied it together and we would kick it around the best we could. And when I think back that was probably the only time that I really felt like a nine-year-old boy in the camp.’
“Meals at the camp started with standing in line for breakfast—ersatz coffee with brown bread. At lunch they lined up at a kind of ‘soup kitchen,’ and most days got potato soup, which, Steen said, was more like boiled water with added potato byproduct, only slightly cooked. Dumplings were often provided as well, but food was scarce. Good soap was not provided either, which made cleanliness extremely difficult, though Steen and his mother made do with their poor quality soap.
“Steen’s mother had two jobs at the camp — working in a mineral factory, and cleaning the floors of a different factory. As a way to pass the time in the camp, Steen’s mother encouraged him to volunteer for work. ‘So, I took German documents from one Nazi office to another.’ Steen says, ‘I also transported messages. I did this for about half an hour to an hour every morning and about forty minutes in the afternoon. All of the documents were in German, and I didn’t know the German language, so I couldn’t read them. I also tried getting in and out of the German offices as quickly as I could because the German officers were very, very intimidating.’
“Often times, Steen passed a kitchen on the way back from his trips. ‘In the kitchen,’ he recalls, ‘there were these big sacks of potatoes. I would look around to make sure that no one was watching me, and I would put a raw potato in each pocket. My mother and I would share the raw potatoes.’ Steen, during his lectures, tells this story to children in schools, and it has earned him the nickname ‘The Potato King.’
“The first six months in the camp were the most brutal. Food was incredibly scarce; starvation and disease claimed the lives of over 40,000 inmates during this time. It was during this time that Steen’s father died of starvation. A witness said that Steen’s father was whipped after not performing up to the Nazis’ work standards, then sent to the infirmary. In the infirmary he died of starvation; around fifty percent of his body weight had been lost. ‘My mother was asked to identify the corpse of my father,’ Steen says, ‘and she didn’t know what else to do with me so I joined her. It was an awful sight.’
“On another day, after Steen’s mother finished cleaning the floors of a factory, an officer came in to assess her work. He said the floor was very clean, then kicked over the bucket of dirty water. It spilled all over the floor, and she cleaned it again. ‘My mother was very, very upset,’ Steen says, ‘but what can you do? There’s nothing that you can do. It was slave labor and she was a slave.’
“Later on in his time at the camp, some of the other children, who were Czech, didn’t show up to play soccer. Steen asked his mother why, and she said not to worry about it, they were probably sick and would be back later. ‘From research I have done,’ Steen says, ‘there were 90,000 out of 140,000 inmates in camp that were deported to extermination camps, most of them to Auschwitz. Those poor children I played with were among those. But, I didn’t know. My mother kind of hid the ugly truth from me.’
Swedish soldiers liberated Metz and his mother on Apr. 15, 1945. Today, he lives in Naples, Florida. Read his full story — and others — here.
This article appears in Jun 21-28, 2018.
