Eighty-nine year-old Holocaust survivor Dave Tuck shared his Holocaust survival story at Dickinson on Thursday, Nov. 8, the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, The Night of Broken Glass. “What I’m going to tell you today,” Tuck prefaced, “I don’t believe it myself.” 

Tuck’s life was forever changed when the Nazi army invaded Poland in 1939, when he was just 10 years old. He saved himself from immediate deportation by proving that he was “not useless” by lying about his age and demonstrating his ability to speak German, he said, which allowed him to find employment in the ghetto. He said that after several months there, he was moved to a work camp tasked with building a turnpike from Berlin to Moscow. Then, he was  transferred to Auschwitz. 

Tuck said that as he entered Auschwitz, he assured an S.S. soldier that he “was not against Hitler” to avoid being sent to the nearby Birkenau gas chambers. Tuck said he had smelled the odors of the gas chambers on his way to Auschwitz and had learned that transfers were made from Auschwitz to Birkenau daily. As he spoke of his the concentration camp, Tuck displayed a tattoo on his wrist to the audience. Serial numbers were tattooed onto Auschwitz prisoners to identify them after death.

Tuck said that he subsisted in the camp on small pieces of stolen bread and had to keep an extreme will to live in order to survive four years in the ghetto and Nazi work camps. When the Americans finally liberated the camps, Tuck said he weighed only 78 pounds. 

Tuck wanted to immigrate to America after Auschwitz, and explained that the journey was long. He did not arrive in Brooklyn for another five years, first travelling to Milan and Paris, where he met his future wife. Tuck showed pictures to the audience of the young couple at their wedding and later in life, accompanied by children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren. 

“As long as I’m alive, I’m going to keep talking,” Tuck assured audience members. “I will never forget what they did, but I will not live with hate,” he said. He told to the audience “if someone bullies you, you don’t say a word, you just walk away… don’t give them the satisfaction.” 

Tuck said despite his experiences, he never rejected his faith. “God didn’t kill us,” he said, “people killed us.”

Lindsay Carey ’19 said she was especially impacted by the discussion following Tuck’s presentation. He spoke about his family and poked fun at his accent. It’s “Pennsylvania Dutch,” he said. Carey said it was “moving to see how human he was despite his difficult past.” 

Tuck delivered his address in commemoration of the eightieth anniversary of Kristallnacht, or The Night of Broken Glass. On Nov. 9-10, 1938, Nazis in Germany destroyed Jewish homes, schools and Synagogues, and killed nearly 100 Jews. Rabbi Ilyse Kramer introduced the event and said the memory of the six million Jews who died in the Holocaust “plead us to change the world through our actions.”

President of the Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center in Philadelphia, Chuck Feldman, told audience members, “you will never forget today. You will never forget this opportunity to hear my good friend tell his story.” He stressed the importance of sharing the stories of survivors and warned that there are still people who deny the existence of the Holocaust, to whom audience members must say “no. I met Dave Tuck at Dickinson College.” 

Carolyn Goode, engagement associate for the Asbell Center for Jewish Life, said that the center worked with the Holocaust Awareness Museum and Education Center in Philadelphia to bring Tuck to Dickinson after they were contacted by Tim and Carolyn Carlisle, owners of the Carlisle House Bed & Breakfast, who had seen Tuck speak at Gettysburg College. 

The Carlisles cosponsored the event with the Asbell Center for Jewish Life, Congregation Beth Tivkvah, and the Center for Service, Spirituality, and Social Justice. The event was held in Allison Hall on Thursday, Nov. 8 as part of a “Lunch and Learn” series. Over 100 audience members, about half of whom were community members, were in attendance.