Harry Haft's unspeakable fight
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This is Harry Haft's Unspeakable Fight from the BBC World Service.
This episode describes upsetting scenes from the Holocaust, including baby and other killings, domestic abuse, self-harm and suicidal thoughts. Alan Haft remembers the abundance of food when he was a kid growing up in 1950s New York City. He used to be overweight, same as his parents.
My refrigerator was stocked, chock full of food, and we were encouraged to eat steaks for breakfast.
It wasn't because the Hafts were wealthy. On the contrary, Alan's dad, Harry, ran a modest fruit and vegetable stand. It was because Alan's dad knew all too well what not having enough food was like.
My father survived five years in concentration camps. No one survived five years.
Harry Haft was a Jewish survivor of the Holocaust. There was a series of green numbers tattooed along his large forearm. At the family home, Harry's friends who also survived the Holocaust would come by to play cards and chat in their native tongue, Yiddish.
They used to come over to my house and they would say, your father's a killer.
Alan didn't know what happened to his father in the Holocaust or whether these friends were telling the truth, but he believed them.
Well, I was terrified of him anyway because at any point he could blow up. You know, my house had plenty of broken windows and, you know, coffee on the ceiling from a coffee cup that he launched when he was angry. He said I was a bad kid and I deserved the beatings I got. I don't know. Are there bad kids?
Alan may not have understood what was going on with his father, but he grew up with the horrors of the Holocaust in his New York City home.
I'm a second generation Holocaust survivor. I consider myself a survivor because I had to survive having a parent who was a survivor. For me, it was just, growing up was just pure hell.
So Alan distanced himself from his father and the trauma surrounding him. Once, when Alan was in his 20s, Harry tried to share with his son what he had been through.
I didn't want to hear anything about his life. He was such a terrible parent that at that time I was just angry and I didn't want him to find a way to have an excuse, you know, for all the abuse.
Even though Harry got out of the camps, he never really got out of survival mode. You're listening to Harry Haft's unspeakable fight for heart and soul from the BBC World Service with me, Jake Warren.
My father was born in 1925 in a small town in Poland called Belkato.
Harry's own father died when he was 10, leaving all nine children for his mother to provide for on her own. Harry and his family were part of a very religious Jewish community. They dressed differently, spoke Yiddish instead of Polish, and segregated themselves into a small section of town.
And because he was poor, he could not go to the Jewish for-pay schools. So he went to the public schools where he experienced an extreme amount of anti-Semitism.
This was before the war, but anti-Semitism was still rampant in Poland. The Christian kids would attack the Jewish kids. Harry learned early that violence was part of ordinary life, and he was built for it.
I mean, he's barrel-chested, dark, black, wavy hair, green eyes that just pop out. He had movie star looks.
But in 1939, Harry's youth abruptly ended when Germany invaded Poland.
They brought with them new rules for the Jews who were living there. They had to wear, of course, the yellow star. They were restricted from a lot of their social activities and confined to what was a ghetto.
Just before Harry's 16th birthday, the Germans posted flyers instructing all Jewish men over the age of 16 to report to the firehouse. Harry's older brother, Arya, complied. But when he didn't return home that evening, Harry was sent to find him. Harry arrived at the firehouse, realizing that his brother and the other men were locked inside.
Well, my father creates a commotion, helps his brother escape, but they grab him, put his hand in the door, break his hand, and throw him into the firehouse.
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