'Looking death in the eye'
Holocaust survivor Small staring down cancer
By
Sally Bridges (
Contact)
Saturday, September 27, 2008
Photo by David Jennings
LIFE WELL LIVED: Martin Small and wife, Doris, hold a family portrait. Small who survived the holocaust is the father of one, grandfather of two and great-grandfather of six. Of surviving his harrowing imprisonment and abuse, Small said, 'God had better plans for me.'
Photo by David Jennings
HAUNTING IMAGES: Holocaust survivor Martin Small is surrounded by his artwork at his Broomfield home. His art often depicts the horrors of the holocaust.
READ, WATCH MORE
Broomfield-based Omni Media Services produced an award-winning video on Martin Small. The video, "American Memories, In Their Own Words --Holocaust Survivor, Martin Small," is available at the Mamie Doud Eisenhower Public Library, 3 Community Park Road.
Small's book, co-written by Vic Shayne, "Remember Us: From My Shtetl Through the Holocaust" is available through Amazon.com or can be ordered through Shayne's Web site at
www.vicshayne.com. Small's proceeds from book sales support the Torah scroll at Congregation Bonai Shalom in Boulder.
To learn more about Martin Small, his life, his art and his poetry visit:
www.martinsmallholocaustsurvivor.com
Death has followed Martin Small in whispers and screams, smoke and bullets for 70 years. It's reflected in his art and in his eyes, which tear easily with the unlocked memories. He has survived a thousand deaths and witnessed a thousand more.
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This time there is no escape. Small, 91 and a holocaust survivor, has pancreatic cancer. No cure, no treatment, only narcotic painkillers by his bed in his Broomfield home, where he spends much of his time. He has the company of Doris, his wife of 57 years, his family and God.
"I'm sitting here looking death in the eye. Death is torture," Small said. "God has a reason; a purpose. We don't know.
"I live to remember."
As a prisoner, Small weighed only about 75 pounds. He doesn't weigh much more now. In a life that was stripped of all possessions, dignity, respect and muscle, Small embraces the intangibles -- love, faith, and friendship. Memories.
A fat, narrow strip of white tape, just below the knuckle of his ring finger, ensures his wedding band will not fall off.
"It's never been off in 57 years, I'm not letting it fall off now," Small said.
He holds a photograph of his family, taken soon after his cancer diagnosis in April. The portrait features his wife, daughter and son-in-law. There are his two grandchildren with their spouses. Six great-grandchildren.
He points to the picture. This family is his legacy. His purpose in life. The reason God allowed him to survive, he said.
"God had better plans for me," he said.
Small's life is a classic "hero's journey," a frequently used literary convention, Boulder author Vic Shayne said. It is a story where a fictional character, such as Indiana Jones, overcomes all odds to cheat death time after time, he said. But in Small's case the story is true.
Shayne helped Small write his memoir, "Remember Us: From My Shtetl Through the Holocaust," which was published in May. "Shtetl" is the Yiddish word for village.
Small grew up in Molchad, a small Polish village that is now in Belarus. He was strong from working on the family farm and he was devout. He was the son and grandson of a Rabbi and can trace Rabbis back nine generations.
His neighbors included five uncles and their families. In 1942, 86 members of his family were killed when the Germans invaded his village. Small was moved to a ghetto.
Small was told his father was "cut into pieces," while his mother and two teenage sisters, who had been repeatedly raped, were buried alive in a mass grave of 3,600 in Molchad.
When Patton's Army liberated Mauthausen concentration camp on May 5, 1945, Small, who had been at the camp a little over a year, had been left for dead in Barrack No. 9, where all the other prisoners were dead. A soldier somehow noticed Small and carried him to an ambulance.
"I don't know if there was a light in my eye or if I moved. He saw a sign of life," said Small, who doesn't rememberthe rescue, but recounted what he had been told by others.
From 1941 until he was rescued, Small had endured unbelievable horrors. He spent months on the run after escaping ghettos and prison camps. He was shot in the arm after one escape through an underground tunnel dug by prisoners. There were days without water. Years without a decent meal.
He landed in Mauthausen after following the sound of the train, filled with Jewish detainees. Searching for discarded food, he was captured and put on board. There his fellow prisoners called him "The Rabbi" as he led them in Hebrew prayers he had memorized as a boy.
After the war, Small was nursed back to health in Austria and then moved to Italy. He fought in the war to establish Israel before moving to New York City in 1950. He met Doris soon after.
"I told him he needed me," Doris said. "I could speak English and he couldn't."
Small became a business man and married Doris in 1951. They lived near Central Park and soon became friends with Jim Curry, a police officer, who patrolled the park on horseback.
"I met Martin because he was breaking the law. He was a criminal," Curry said with a laugh from his Long Island, N.Y., home last week. "He had these two Dobermans and he let his dogs go (off leash). You know these dogs have a reputation."
As Curry scolded Small, the dogs gently nuzzled his hand and Curry was unable to hide his love for dogs. Small and Curry were fast friends. Throughout their friendship, Curry, a World War II veteran, and Small never discussed the specifics of the war.
It would be 35 years later, after Small moved to Colorado, when they would discover Curry, a 19-year-old private in Patton's Army, had carried a lifeless prisoner out of Mauthausen.
Curry said he isn't sure he was the one who carried out Small. Small is convinced.
"He calls me his messiah. He's too generous," Curry said. "We were very busy. There were a lot of bodies we had to carry."
It would take years for the horror of what he saw to sink in. There were lots of nightmares, Curry said.
"You wonder how you come out normal," Curry said.
After Small retired, he began to paint, carve wood and write poetry. His artwork and writing are often of haunting images from the Holocaust. His works line the walls of his basement.
Like many of the Holocaust survivors, Small had pushed the images out of his head, just to survive, Shayne said.
It was very painful for Small to recount what had happened. Once he began telling his story, he started having nightmares again, Shayne said.
"He told me, 'I'm going through the pain to remember, to know what my village was like,'" Shayne said. " 'These things are painful to remember, but even more painful to forget.'"
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