Tech: A Tool after the Holocaust

By Rysha Sultania

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It wouldn’t be fair to discuss technology and its myriad development without noting what the world went through for it to take its current firm. This is an interview with Billy Harvey, a Holocaust survivor, showing us how technology after the deep cruelty the world witnessed was probably a very distant dream.

“I graduated age of 18 from a gymnasium [an advanced secondary school]. Unfortunately my graduation present became Birkenau Auschwitz. We were [in the ghetto] for six weeks under terrible sanitation conditions. We were freezing, we had very little food to eat. One day the train arrived...they pushed into one cattle car as many people they possibly can—so that we were crushed like sardines. There [were] no windows on the cattle car. When the sliding doors slammed closed on us, the only light came through the wooden cracks.

When we first glanced out, it looked like a twilight zone, big chimneys going to the sky, smoke was going all over. We didn't know where the smoke was coming from, but we found out soon enough—the smoke was coming from the crematorium. They were burning—burning between 12,000 and 13,000 people a day. We were stripped from every inch of human dignity. They made us strip

completely naked, shaved our hair, gave us a prisoner’s suit to wear. We passed by where the [women were]...my mother, my aunt, my cousins and their children all were naked as we glanced in, and they

looked like they were in a trance. [The Nazis] must have used a gas, a small amount, because they didn't look normal. We weren't allowed to say a word...we'd be murdered immediately.

Every morning, four o'clock, they knocked on the door [for] roll call. I don't know what was the purpose of it because nobody could escape—the barracks were surrounded by barbed wire, the barbed

wire was connected to electricity and every morning in front of the barracks was piled up naked dead people. Once a day you got a bowl of soup—they called it soup, I don't know what it was, it wasn’t fit for an animal. No utensils. Five to six people have to share it, so we handed it [from] mouth to mouth, back and forth until the soup disappeared.

When I wanted to give up, I said [to myself] what a great lady my mother was, who stood by all the hardship, raising six children, all by herself in such a primitive circumstances. That's what gave me the strength to want to survive—and also to tell the world what was happening. [As the Allies approached, the Nazis evacuated Harvey and other prisoners to Buchenwald by cattle car.] People [were] dying left and right from hunger. When they died, we took their clothes off to try to

keep warmer. When we arrived back to Buchenwald, they came to collect all the dead people from the cattle car to transport them to the crematorium. I was frozen. I was put among the dead people. When I arrived to the crematorium, the prisoner who worked there discovered that I was still alive. He saved my life. I woke up in the barrack. When I opened my eyes, I thought I was in a five-star hotel. Nobody was hollering at me. Nobody was beating me. I was age of 21. I weighed 72 pounds. I could not stand up well on my feet. But I was so happy to be alive. Next day, I ask the people to carry me outside. I wanted to get some fresh air. They carried me outside. I hear a gentleman speak with

the French accent.

I was the age of 22 and I came to [the United States] with one pair of shoes and shirt and slacks, and I was determined to make a success out of my life and that's what I did. I also discovered the best revenge in life is success. You can't hate your enemies, as I said, because "when you hate you're not living.”

Billy Harvey, 95, established a successful career as a celebrity cosmetologist before opening his own beauty salon, working with actresses including Judy Garland, Mary Martin and Zsa Zsa Gabor. He currently speaks regularly at the Museum of Tolerance and other venues to share his experiences. After reading of his strife find it extremely gratifying to see how he relies on technology to find solace and liberation from his past through a technical career. It just shows us how technology is a coping too in every field of life!