Skip To Content
JEWISH. INDEPENDENT. NONPROFIT.
Breaking News

On Reddit, Holocaust Survivor Describes Hellish Life in 7 Nazi Camps

(JTA) — A 92-year-old man who survived seven different German concentration camps participated in a question and answer session, detailing his harrowing near-death to liberation story.

Henry Flescher, who now lives in Aventura, Florida and had not heard of the social news-sharing site Reddit before the session earlier this week, participated in the forum with the help of his grandson, the Australian Broadcasting Corporation reported on Wednesday.

“Most people are never happy and complain too much. It’s too hot out, it’s too cold out. Life is beautiful, no need to complain so much,” he said.

Flescher, who was born in Vienna, escaped to France during World War II but was captured in Lyon. He spent the next three years in seven concentration camps, including Auschwitz.

He described being transported to a camp by a cattle car packed with prisoners and one bucket to use as a toilet.

“The smell was unfathomable,” Flescher said.

After enduring six days in the car, 300 were taken off the train and the others were shipped off to be killed at Auschwitz. Flescher said he was number 298.

“I will never forget the number 298,” he said.

Flescher went on to work in a shoe factory at the Ohrdruf camp and helped build bridges at the Peiskretscham camp. He also worked at the Blechhamer camp, a place he called “hell” and where he witnessed a friend be hanged for using a telephone wire as a belt to hold his pants up.

“Punishments were a daily routine and my front teeth were knocked out here,” he said.

He nearly gave up hope when he contracted a bad case of dysentery at the Gross Rosen camp.

“I lived for tomorrow. I was always positive,” he said.

He was eventually found hiding in a chicken coop by American soldiers in 1945.

“I have always believed in God. Before and after. God didn’t kill the people, the Nazis did,” he said.

Numerous celebrities and thought leaders, from Jerry Seinfeld to President Barack Obama, have participated in Reddit AMA sessions, which solicit questions from users in the website’s social network community.

A message from our CEO & publisher Rachel Fishman Feddersen

I hope you appreciated this article. Before you move on, I wanted to ask you to support the Forward’s award-winning journalism during our High Holiday Monthly Donor Drive.

If you’ve turned to the Forward in the past 12 months to better understand the world around you, we hope you will support us with a gift now. Your support has a direct impact, giving us the resources we need to report from Israel and around the U.S., across college campuses, and wherever there is news of importance to American Jews.

Make a monthly or one-time gift and support Jewish journalism throughout 5785. The first six months of your monthly gift will be matched for twice the investment in independent Jewish journalism. 

—  Rachel Fishman Feddersen, Publisher and CEO

Join our mission to tell the Jewish story fully and fairly.

Republish This Story

Please read before republishing

We’re happy to make this story available to republish for free, unless it originated with JTA, Haaretz or another publication (as indicated on the article) and as long as you follow our guidelines. You must credit the Forward, retain our pixel and preserve our canonical link in Google search.  See our full guidelines for more information, and this guide for detail about canonical URLs.

To republish, copy the HTML by clicking on the yellow button to the right; it includes our tracking pixel, all paragraph styles and hyperlinks, the author byline and credit to the Forward. It does not include images; to avoid copyright violations, you must add them manually, following our guidelines. Please email us at [email protected], subject line “republish,” with any questions or to let us know what stories you’re picking up.

We don't support Internet Explorer

Please use Chrome, Safari, Firefox, or Edge to view this site.