By Pat Desmond
Times Staff
3/27/08
Kurt Ladner lived through the time when six million Jews perished in Europe.
Shipped out of his native Vienna in 1942 on a train to the death camps with his mother, father, brothers and friends, he spent the war years at Terazin, Dachau and Auschwitz.
He entered these places as a strong teenager with job skills and athletic ability. He left a near skeleton.
For 60 years following World War II, he tried to heal and live. He coped. He moved to America—found work—married—fathered two children—and moved through a simple life.
Now Ladner is sharing his story about the Holocaust with the world. He has written a manuscript he hopes will make a difference.
He lives in a bright, spacious apartment in Fuller Village with his second wife, Betty. They love their life together in this community only a few miles from the place where Betty was born and raised in Boston. They say they can’t believe what Fuller has to offer them.
Ladner says writing the story of his life was “a cleansing of repressed feelings.”
“It was especially hard remembering my parents, brothers and sister, who so cruelly lost their lives, taken by the Hitler regime and his murderous underlings.”
But while he wrote the story for himself and his family, he hopes a book publisher will see value in this story of hardship and survival.
He spent years working to help other countrymen who were victims of the Nazis gain compensation from Austria. His work resulted in an agreement more than a dozen years ago. Ladner still has a newspaper clipping of a story about the agreement that includes a photo of himself with the Austrian chancellor.
He does not consider the money Austria paid to the survivors enough. He wants to be sure people remember the story. But he knows that each survivor’s story is different.
There were many people who helped him survive. He acknowledges unexpected acts of kindness but also many betrayals and acts of cruelty.
The book is painful to read. The images are clear and often dark.
Until last year Ladner believed he was the only member of his family to live through the concentration camps. He discovered that one brother also survived but lived the rest of his life on Russian soil. His brother died six months before Ladner uncovered the truth.
The manuscript he has written begins with a Jewish boy filled with joy over getting a bicycle for his 11th birthday. The scene is set with loyalty and love. Both his parents work hard outside the home to provide for the family. The boy, young Ladner, is talented enough to earn money singing in his community’s temple. He is an agile soccer player whose athletic skill later becomes a negotiating point during his imprisonment.
Here’s a excerpt from his manuscript about the time of the Austrian occupation, the Krystalnacht.