August 29, 2019
At the Museum of Jewish Heritage monthly Stories Survive Speaker Series you can hear Holocaust survivors share their life stories in their own words. On Wednesday evening Eddy Boas shared his story:
For The First 5 Years of My Life, I Lived in Hell
3 years, 4 months a Jew in GERMAN OCCUPIED HOLLAND,
4 months in WESTERBORK TRANSIT CAMP,
1 year, 2 months in BERGEN-BELSEN CONCENTRATION CAMP
14 days on THE ‘LOST TRAIN’
51 days ROAMING THROUGH EAST GERMANY …
I’m not a Victim, I am a Survivor
“Born in January 1940 in The Hague, Holland, to a Jewish family, I, Elias “Eddy” Boas spent the first 5 years of my life in the living hell that was the Holocaust.
“My odds of surviving this hell were; 6,000,000/1
“While my extended family were all but wiped out with 64 Cousins, Aunts, Uncles and Grandparents aged 3 to 73 all murdered. Myself my brother, father and mother were all sent to Bergen Belsen and the Red Cross advised me they have no records of any other family, father, mother and 2 sons going into a concentration camp and surviving as a family, as we did. The odds of that happening just can’t be calculated.
“Even after surviving the concentration camps, the lost train and nearly 2 months of roaming through East Germany as a 5 year old, I was on the verge of death due to Typhus, but was saved by the incredible kindness of an English soldier, Captain Douglas. A man that I owe my life to and a man whose family I tried to find (with no success) and thank for the act of kindness that enabled me to lead a truly remarkable life.
“Up until August 2002, I had never tried to discover how I survived the Holocaust. My recollection of the wartime period from 1940 to 1945 and what transpired between 1945 and 1954 has been blocked from my memory.
“My memories begin the day I arrived in Australia on 14 March 1954.
“This book is about my feelings and interpretation of how my family were betrayed by a Dutch population whom they had lived with as neighbours for hundreds of years, and how an unsympathetic Dutch government and Dutch bureaucracy treated my family and other Jews during and after the horror of the Holocaust with a total lack of empathy.
“In my early years in Australia I led a quiet life. I went to school for 2 years, left school at 15 and had various jobs including in 1989 being appointed President of a company, located in New Jersey, and part of a Wall Street listed multi national organisation.
“I did not look back nor did I make plans for the future. My life was simple, and I lived by the rule: Whatever happened yesterday I cannot do anything about; tomorrow, who knows what will happen; but today I can control. This is how I took control of my life and it has served me well.
“In 2002, during my recovery from a heart bypass, my wife Donna suggested I should write a book how my family were able to survive the Holocaust.
“This has been a long and difficult road; it has been frustrating, emotional and at times depressing.
“I investigated how it was that my father, mother, brother and myself were able to survive five years of hell – including 434 days in Bergen-Belsen concentration camp – when millions had not.
“My findings from over 15 years of investigation are detailed in this book.”
Order Eddy’s book here.