Despite the odds being against him, Abraham Peck — who as a young man was held in nine Nazi concentration camps — lived a long life.
Peck passed away last week at the age of 91.
Born in Szadek, Poland, a town of 3,500, Peck faced starvation, disease and the constant threat of death between the ages of 15 and 20 after the Nazi invasion. Over the years Peck watched as his family died at the hands of the Nazis. Only seven of his cousins survived.
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The conditions in the camps were horrendous, with many dying from disease and starvation.
When he was 16 years old, Peck came down with typhoid, according to The Washington Post. Then his father died. All he wanted was to see his father buried, even if it was just to see his body being dumped into a mass grave. Instead, a soldier slammed a rifle into the back of his head, responding, “You goddamn dog. You go back to work.”
Peck was liberated by the Americans on April 30, 1945. Marked with the number 143450 on his left forearm, he bore both the mental and physical scars of the war all his life. But he managed to start over.
Once he was liberated, Peck was sent to Germany to search for other Polish survivors. He married another survivor and, with their young son, moved to the United States in 1949.
When Peck arrived in the U.S., he shared his story of survival.
In a book published earlier this year called Abe. vs. Adolf, written by Maya Ross, Peck told the author it wasn’t easy at first to open up about his past.
“In the beginning, we didn’t talk about it. We all were like little kids,” he told Ross. “We didn’t talk to American adults about it because they didn’t understand. The American Jews didn’t believe us … the stories about SS men, the way they pushed us into the ghettos, the way they killed us, the way they treated us.
“They didn’t want to hear a word about it. It was too terrible for them to believe so we shut up. I shut up for years.”
But Peck pushed on, giving public talks in synagogues and universities, allowing people to experience the horrors of his first-hand accounts of life in concentration camps.
“I fight all my life. From all the relatives, I am the only one which talks about the Holocaust,” Peck said in a book-launch video. “How wrong it was; to remember that hate and discrimination is no good.”
It was important to Peck that history not be repeated.
“I would like the world to remember. Please: Don’t forget us when we’re gone.”
Peck is survived by his son, two grandchildren and three great-grandchildren.