The "A Holocaust Survivor's Story Moved A Group Of Teens" Story

It was an ordinary day.  Just finished reading a story that was in my local newspaper that was titled "Holocaust survivor's story moved a group of teens."  It was written by Rich Christensen for Lancaster's Sunday newspaper.  I have condensed it somewhat to give you an idea as to what was in Rich's story in the "I Know A Story" column. 

In 2010, as a professor of religion at Lakeland College in Wisconsin, I helped organize a presentation by a Holocaust survivor for a group of almost 100 13- and 14-year-old youth from churches of the local area.  The speaker, an 83-year-old Polish Jewish man named Robert Matzner, told the extraordinary story of his arrest in 1942 with his extended family.  He saw his mother and his grandmother put to death by Nazi soldiers because they could not walk fast enough when being forced to march to a labor camp in Germany.  In that camp, as a 15-year-old, Matzner's life was saved when the camp commandant discovered he could speak German, and chose him to be an assistant in the camp office.  A kind secretary would bring him sandwiches to eat which enabled him to stay nourished. He was then asked to tell a story.  He paused a moment, then began his story bu telling his listeners that we should remember there is often good present even in the worst of circumstances. He began his story with:  In late April of 1945, with the war coming to an end,  the SS guards took all their prisoners on a forced march west in an attempt to escape the oncoming Russian army. Guards shot people in the back of the head if they were moving too slowly, leaving the bodies on the ground.  Many prisoners were too weak and sick to travel, so each morning they were roughly awakened and the SS shot anyone who was either too sick or too tired to move.  One night when they stopped to sleep in an old barn, young Martzner stayed awake until he though everyone else had fallen asleep.  He climbed a ladder to a hayloft, burrowed into the hay, and stayed there quietly all night.  The next morning the SS wakened all the prisoners and moved them out to continue their flight westward, not realizing they were missing one prisoner.  After the soldiers and the other prisoners had departed, Matzner stayed quietly in the loft for a full day and another night to be sure no one returned for him.  He then left and began walking until in a small town he saw a crowd of ordinary Germans.  He walked along with them, mingling easily with his fluent German, thus completing his escape from his captors.  Martzner spoke for two hours to the youth, who remained completely silent the entire time as they listened to his story with awe.  Fascinated and deeply moved by his story, many expressed amazement they were hearing this from a man who had actually lived through that time period.  Hearing their reactions and feeling in himself the power of his story, a sudden realization struck him:  Martzner had taken his first breath of freedom and began a new life in the very same week he had taken his first breath as a newborn baby_ the fourth week in April, 1945.  His escape seems that it was meant to be!  It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.