David Shentow

Holocaust survivor David Shentow speaking to students at Auschwitz-Birkenau (photo credit: Yossi Zeliger)

David Shentow (April 29, 1925 – June 12, 2017) was a Belgian-Canadian Holocaust survivor and educator. He is featured in a number of Canadian Holocaust related films and books.

Early life

David Shentow was born David Krzetowski on April 29, 1925 in Warsaw, Poland to Rivka and Moishe Avraham, who were originally from Białobrzegi, Poland. He was the eldest of 3 children and had two sisters, Paula (Perel) and Esther. A short time after David was born, he and his parents moved to Antwerp, Belgium where David attended the local Tachkemoni school. None of his immediate family was to survive the Holocaust.^[1]

WWII

When WWII broke out in September 1939, David’s father tried to flee to France with his family, but the border was closed and they returned to Antwerp. There the situation for the Jewish community gradually worsened. In 1941, Jews had to turn in their radios and bicycles to the Gestapo office. David along with all Jewish children, was forbidden to go to school, banned from many public places, and forced to wear the yellow Star of David on his clothing along with all members of the Jewish community. When Shentow was 17 years old, all able-bodied men, and boys aged 16 or older, were forced to report to the railway station in Antwerp, from where he was sent to a number of camps, including Auschwitz-Birkenau in 1942. He would never see his parents or sisters again.^[2] When he was profiled by CBC in 2015, he recalled arriving at Auschwitz on a train at 4 o’clock in the morning and being ordered off along with a young woman with a crying baby: "The SS walked over to her and pointed, 'Keep it quiet,'" he said. "No matter how hard she was trying to keep the baby quiet, the baby started to cry louder. He ran over to her, grabbed the baby by the legs and threw it against the train. Then I knew, I'm in hell." Shentow eventually survived Auschwitz-Birkenau, and many other trying experiences, including the death marches and the Dachau concentration camp, from where he was liberated on his 20th birthday, April 29, 1945.^[3]

Appearance in films

Shentow is the central figure in the Ottawa-born documentary director Koa Padolsky’s film ”Le Chemin des Juifs” (2017)^[4] which chronicles his Holocaust experiences during the war. ‘Le Chemin des Juifs’ (The Road of the Jews) refers to a 4km concrete road that Belgian Jewish slave laborers, including David Shentow, were forced to build by the Nazis. The road was to be utilized by heavy armoured vehicles and tanks for Hitler’s intended invasion of England. Located close to the French coastline towns of Hardelot and Condette, the road can still be found, in a local nature reserve, and the foot-prints of both the Jewish prisoners and their German captors (and their dogs) are still preserved in the concrete.^[5]

He also appears in the film Blind Love (2015 film), where he recalls in shock his first moments in Auschwitz, when the German guards set their dog upon the prisoner standing next to him, killing him instantly.

"A gentleman standing beside me stopped the SS man very politely: Excuse me sir, I will leave the luggage – can I just take out a picture? The SS man lost his temper and let the dogs loose. They didn’t run, they just flew in the air straight to the men’s neck.And as the man stopped moving, I said: My God this man is dead! And this was the first 10 -15 minutes. I knew I am in Hell.”

In the same film, Shentow contrasts the Nazis training of dogs to attack prisoners along with the Nazi genocidal treatment of people with disabilities, with the experience of a group of blind Israelis traveling to Auschwitz on the March of the Living with their guide dogs.

“These dogs were there to kill, these dogs are here for life. ….[Those dog] were trained to jump on people’s necks – then you see a dog like that – like night and day.”

Later life and Holocaust education

David Shentow immigrated to Canada in 1949 where he married Rose Feldberg (whose roots were also from Białobrzegi, Poland) and together they raised their daughters Renee and Lorie. It was a chance encounter in the 1980s with Canadian Holocaust denier Ernst Zundel that prompted to speak about the Holocaust.^[6] In Witness: Passing the Torch of Holocaust Memory to New Generations , by Eli Rubenstein, Shentow is quoted as saying that when he first learned there were people denying the Holocaust, “I said there and then, I would crawl on my hands and knees all the way to Auschwitz-Birkenau, or anywhere else, to tell my story to anyone who was willing to listen. his is why I march and why I speak.”

In the same book, he recalled his first visit to Auschwitz-Birkenau on the March of the Living: “Well, when we went to Auschwitz…it shook me up. Especially when I saw the big sign [Arbeit Mach Frei]. It brought back such painful memories. I just stood at the gate. I was mesmerized. [Then] one student came up to me, ‘David, David…we will walk in together, and we will walk out together.’ “They were holding on to me or I was holding on to them. I don’t remember anymore – the sympathy, the hugging…there are no words to describe it. It will be with me forever.”

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