Ending a day of Holocaust remembrance, more than 150 people crowded Houston Hall's Bodek Lounge last night to hear a speech by Holocaust survivor and filmmaker Zev Kedem. Kedem, who was rescued from death by Oskar Schindler, served as a consultant to Steven Spielberg in the creation of last year's Academy Award-winning Schindler's List. While relating his Holocaust experiences, Kedem spoke in a calm, steady voice with a British accent. "I was born in Poland in 1934," he said. "I came from a Jewish family that was totally assimilated." Kedem explained that he was five years old when the Germans entered Poland. That was when things started to change, he said, explaining that some of his family was placed in a ghetto in Poland. "People started losing control of their existence," he said. "The Jewish area was surrounded by walls and barbed wire. Communication by television or radio was punishable by automatic death." The Jews in this ghetto were also stripped of their identity, Kedem explained. "We had to wear the yellow stars of David, and any show of culture such as a beard was considered objectionable and for that you could get beaten up," he said. Kedem added that those in the ghetto had to give up their personal belongings -- such as fur coats -- for the war effort. He also said that when deportation began, nobody under the age of 13 or too old to work was allowed to stay in the ghetto. The families thought that they had been taken for resettlement, but later learned that the deported were sent to death camps. The last deportation took place when Kedem was eight or nine years old. He said that when this deportation started, some of his family hid in a pigeon coop. "There was nothing else to do there but sit in fear and listen to what was going on outside," he said, describing the sounds of yelling and occasional gunshots. Kedem said those with work permits were forced to dig up Jewish graves and turn over gold teeth and other valuables found to the Germans. He added that the children who were too young or weak to be deported were systematically executed. When the Germans searched the building in which they were hiding, his grandparents were prepared to take poison rather than be taken to concentration camps. Kedem said that his mother knew that deportation would mean death for him, and that the only way to save his life was to put him among the workers by smuggling him into a concentration camp. He was hidden in a wagon filled with jewelry and smuggled into a camp. "I started work in a brush factory," he said. "I would produce more brush than anyone. It was a competition to stay alive." He added that he surrounded himself with older boys and sat up higher than anyone else -- so as not to be killed because of his youth. Kedem said people brought into the camps were forced to strip naked and stand in the cold. They were then forced to walk over lime-covered corpses in a demonstration of complete control by the Nazis. He added that the prisoners were given small pieces of bread covered in sawdust to eat, along with soup devoid of solids. He explained that when Oskar Schindler created his fictitious factory, Kedem's adopted father got him on the famous list of people who were "purchased" to work for him. But because of his age, Kedem was sent back to Auschwitz. He said that when he was given a tattooed number, he had tears of not only discomfort but happiness -- because it meant he would live a little longer. He said that at night, he had to strap on his boots tightly to keep them from being stolen. He also had to cover his body in mud to keep from being eaten by rats. Kedem explained that he was liberated two weeks before his 11th birthday. He then moved to England, received an Oxford degree in engineering and moved to Israel. He was reunited with his sister 20 years after liberation, and with his mother another 20 years later.
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