The Polish Phoenix - Transcript
[MUSIC]
[NARRATOR]
It’s fall in Sidney. Time for the annual Octoberfest. Time for Benny Hochman to stir up his famous sauerkraut.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
We sell it by the bowl, but people love it so much, they buy it by the bowl.
[WOMAN]
I always come for Benny’s sauerkraut. He has to give me the recipe someday.
[WOMAN]
Will it cure the common cold?
[MAN]
I think Benny guarantees that.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
We like to have it cooked, and the more you cook it, it seems the better that it gets.
[NARRATOR]
The recipe is a family one. And every time Benny makes it, it takes him back to a time when all was right in his world. A time before the ashes of war clouded his childhood memories with sorrow. And it’s Benny’s story that brings him here to Lakeview High School. Within the walls of this gymnasium, Benny will recount the tragic tale of his early life and speak of a man reborn through hope.
[SPEAKER]
It gives me great pleasure to introduce to you a man who currently resides in Sidney, Nebraska. Mr. Benny Hochman. [applause]
[NARRATOR]
As Benny Hochman speaks, his thick accent permeates the room.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
And I wish and hope and pray that your ears are wide open and listen to every word.
[NARRATOR]
These students are about to realize there is more to Benny Hochman than his pleasant elder face reveals.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
I’m gonna take you back while I lived in Poland. And you young men here of 16 years old and you think that a young 16-year-old boy in Poland was different than you? Believe me. Not. Same thing. The same feelings. The same admoneration. The same want. I wanted the same thing you. I wanted to be a good basketball player. And I loved girls. I don’t know if girls more than basketball or basketball more than girls. But I think more girls than basketball. (laugh)
[NARRATOR]
In 1939, Benny was living with his parents and older brother and a younger sister in Loge, Poland. But by the fall of that year, Benny’s world would be crushed.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
When we sound asleep, the whole family back together. And there’s a pounding on the door. Then mother gets up to see who in the world is there. And she got to the door, there were broken in. The Gestapo.
[NARRATOR]
The Gestapo, Adolph Hitler’s secret police. As German military advanced through new territory, the Gestapo rounded up the educated, the affluent, the leaders of the community, and former service members. All were considered threats to the Nazi government.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
They would give the German Third Reich troubles. They’re too smart of their good, so they were all taken out. And that’s how my brother happened to go and because I was 16, just as tall, and my mother was not gonna let my brother go, they said, you too.
[ROSE LEE HOLECHEK]
They just went through and just, you know, terrorized people [MUSIC] and took them. And it was before ghettos were built. So he was in the first wave. Which makes it even more of a miracle that he lived through it.
[NARRATOR]
Benny begins to recount the story of his internment to children well-removed from events that happened 60 years ago.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
Into this boxcar. And when the boxcar was plum full, the door was closed. The boxcar never opened up. No food, no drink, no nothing. Until we finally arrived in this place that I really didn’t know what this place was, you know. And that was Auschwitz.
[SAD MUSIC]
[NARRATOR]
Auschwitz. The largest of all Nazi concentration camps. One of the many camps established in geographic isolation from the fatherland. Its purpose to carry out Hitler’s final solution to annihilate the European Jewish population.
[ROSE LEE HOLECHEK]
A lot of people assume we were Jewish. We weren’t raised Jewish, and Dad doesn’t claim to be Jewish. They just went through Poland and were not human at all. He says that he was Roman Catholic, and he grew up Catholic.
[NARRATOR]
History reveals that Hitler believed the Polish people were sub-human. His goal was to remove all Poles from the land and repopulate it with Germans. Many Poles were executed in the street or shipped off to labor camps where they would later die.
[SAD MUSIC]
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
And that’s when I lost my brother because he got sick right away. Diarrhea terribly bad. And he uh couldn’t be propped up even to stand up when the—one of those two lined up to be counted. And when they could not prop him up, they shot him beside my feet. It just hurt me terrible terrible bad. Because I was so close to him, you know, and he was my pride, you know.
[NARRATOR]
Benny is re-living his own nightmare.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
Rip a tiny little child, days, weeks old out of the mother’s arms.
[ROSE LEE HOLECHEK]
And he’s pretty blunt now, and I think he used to kind of soften his speech and as he gets older, he doesn’t. And I think that’s okay. We need to know exactly how it was.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
And throw it up in the air as high as he could and his friend was pull Luga pistol and shoot it.
[MARIE HOCHMAN]
He still has bad dreams like he probably will now after speaking here and this and that. Where he’s reliving everything and he wakes me up screaming and hollering.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
Folks, two years in there, I lost my father and mother. And my dear little sister that I cannot talk about.
[ROSE LEE HOLECHEK]
He’s 79. He’ll be 80, and we want him just to rest. I think it’s hard on him. I think it takes a lot of recovery emotionally.
[NARRATOR]
Benny’s concern lies in the innocence sitting in front of him.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
My talk, well I’m getting older now, I should probably quit. And then by gosh, [SAD MUSIC] it ended up, you know, with different places in the world for the still killing and dictators taking over, and people asking me to come and speak again. I decided, no, I guess I just cannot quit.
[DRUMS]
[NARRATOR]
In January of 1945, advancing Russian troops forced the Nazis to abandon Auschwitz. Camp prisoners were marched to Buchenwald, a labor camp in Germany. Then finally, Benny’s day of liberation came on April 15th, 1945.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
Folks, when the gate was busted open, and the Americans came in, and the prisoners that were still healthy would climb all over the six by sixes and the jeeps and begging for food. And the American soldier that to this day I just love.
[NARRATOR]
An American officer, driving out of the liberated camp, saw Benny lying on the ground. To this day, Benny doesn’t know what compelled 1st Sargent Charles Kenny to stop his jeep and pick Benny off the ground. But at the age of 21, Benny was recovering in a U.S. Army field hospital.
[MUSIC]
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
And they come over, not knowing one word of English what they said to me. Tapped me on the head. Tapped me on the shoulder, leave me cigars, cigarettes, candy, a smile, and my mind is clear, and I think this is an American soldier. And this was the God-damn Nazi. The same color skin. The same color men. The same color uniform. Different insignias. But on a different man. [MUSIC]
[NARRATOR]
The nine twenty-six signal battalion took Benny under their wings. For the next two years, Benny worked with the nine twenty-six. But his ultimate goal was to immigrate to the United States. As soldiers went home, promises were made, but that’s when another first Sargent came to Benny’s aid.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
I got word from the American Embassy and also from my commanding officer that the Towley family, they all signed affidavits and they all sponsored me.
[NARRATOR]
On May 10th, 1947, Benny stepped off the train in Lebanon, Nebraska.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
Grandma and Grandpa Towley just hugged me and they said, well we have a large family. We just increased by one. One more. Well, I got it made, so greatly made. All the things I need in life. My children are doing great. My grand-children are doing wonderfully. I belong to the Methodist Church. [MUSIC] And the man that called, man and wife across the street the Catholic Church and the Lutheran Church. And I keep thinking, that is freedom and liberty. And the freedom and liberty is given to us, and if we don’t protect it, if we don’t work for it, if we don’t take part in the community, in the state, in the nation, we will lose it.
[NARRATOR]
For Benny Hochman, it’s not just talking the talk. It’s also in walking the walk. [BAND MUSIC] Back at the Sidney Octoberfest, among the bands and the floats, is Benny in his 61 Ford Falcon. He’s lending his support for a favorite cause. The Western Community College Endowment Fund. Later, he’ll be volunteering at the Kiwannis Group. But he’s also a member of the Elks. On the board of Blue Cross Blue Shield. A lay person of his Methodist Church. A former for Jaysee. And the list just goes on.
[C.J. CORNELIUS, M.D.]
Well, I’m not sure that Benny really ever learned to say no. If you needed something, or somebody needed something and they have called on Benny, Benny delivered. And Benny doesn’t do things half-way. He goes full bore.
[GARY PERSON]
He’s got his own way of motivating people. He’s got a special relationship with almost everybody in town and I know he would—he would always make sure he kept me humble. No matter what I did in life, he’d be there pounding on a door and telling me I wasn’t doing enough or wasn’t doing a good enough job. And he says, now Benny Hochman, he be watching you.
[DARRELL JOHNSON]
He’s a part of a regime in Cheyenne County that just started when Benny came here and then all of us growing up knew Benny. He’s always been Mr. Cheyenne County, you know. He is!
[WOMAN]
Benny’s the greatest guy. We all love Benny.
[MAN]
There are really no strangers to Benny. If Benny knows your name, he’ll know you from then on.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
Maybe this is a small town, but that’s why I stay here because boy, it’s just great people, you know, great people.
[NARRATOR]
For 51 years, Sidney has been Benny’s home. [CHIME MUSIC] But he’s always longed to go back to Poland, his homeland. In 1999, 60 years since he was town from his family, Benny and his daughter Judy went back to Loge, back to Auchwitz.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
I tell you, it was so emotional and Judy was telling me a year before we were getting all ready to go. Oh Dad, you’re gonna be okay. I’ll take care of you and she, I think, was the first one to go to pieces, you know, when we—special—what really happened is when we got into that to our house, a bakery, you know. Me and my brother would raise carrier pigeons. It was a hobby. We just loved to do that. And Judy says, dad, I don’t see any pigeons at all. You know, she remembered that I was talking about pigeons. And we just standing in the yard and we could hear—I don’t know if you heard pigeons making this coooooo, this noise. Then we sure enough found the pigeon. I don’t know if it was still the original. I mean from generations back or whatever, but there was a pigeon there. One pigeon. As we were leaving. It was a white pigeon. It just—that really—I mean little things like that.
[NARRATOR]
Like the mythical Phoenix, Benny too has risen from the ashes. He survived the Holocaust, was reborn by kindness. He endeavors to burn the fire of freedom.
[BENNY HOCHMAN]
So folks, I beg. I ask. That this land of ours should be free forever. Forever and ever. That your children and grandchildren should be free forever and ever. And I want to thank you very much. [APPLAUSE] [CHIME MUSIC]
"From Hell to Here" by Benny Hochman
For more information on this story try reading Benny Hochman's autobiography which tells the story of his incredible experiences during World War II.
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