Slabotsky, a Portland tailor, was the featured speaker Friday at the Lewiston Public Library as the city commemorated the annual National Days of Remembrance.

“One thing I never understand; People say this never happened,” Slabotsky said. “That means that all the Americans that liberated us lied or were dreaming. I had one woman who called me and told me this and I said ‘I’ll bring you a few liberators and you tell them that. But you have to be there.’ She said ‘Ah! No! I said ‘You are chicken!'”

Slabotsky detailed how his life led him from his home in Belgium to the infamous Nazi concentration camps at Auschwitz-Birkenau, his rescue by Allied troops and his eventual immigration to the U.S.

“People tell me, ‘Oh, in Maine, it’s cold in the winter,'” said Slabotsky. “Folks, I’m sorry to disappoint you. It’s not. I wear the same thing in winter, summer. I don’t have to wear a jacket and all that. But on the border between Germany and Poland, it’s cold. If you go, take a jacket.”

Slabotsky was born in Belgium to a family of tailors, living in the apartments above his grandfather’s shop in Brussels. The family attempted to escape to England in 1939 but were turned back in France. They returned to find Brussels increasingly under Nazi control.

When his father and uncle disappeared, the family split up, with Slabotsky, his mother and younger brother moving on. Then his mother disappeared, leaving the two boys alone.

A neighbor helped the boys find places. Slabotsky’s brother went to a Catholic convent and stayed there until after the war.

“The nun said she had to baptize him,” Slabotsky said. “She said ‘If the Gestapo comes inside the convent, I can swear on the Bible that we have no Jewish people.'”

Slabotsky was taken to a mansion owned by a local count and hidden.

“But he had some conditions,” he said. “I have a room for you, but nobody can see you or know you are there. You have to keep the shades down and the radio very, very low. And every day, my wife or I will bring you some food and a magazine.”

One day, the family went out of town and his benefactor warned Slabotsky to stay indoors and well out of sight. That proved to be difficult for a young boy.

“I don’t smoke, I drink very little,” Slabotsky said. “But I have something else. I eat ice cream. I love ice cream. I thought I could go and find a place in the neighborhood and find a little bit of ice cream.”

The neighborhood was unfamiliar, however, and he got lost coming back. A local Nazi collaborator found and turned him in. He spent five months in a prison in Brussels before he was loaded on a train and taken to Auschwitz. There he was stripped, his head was shaved and he was given a number.

“They had my piece of paper and my name was scratched out, and there was a number,” Slabotsky said. “It was 74 44 34. That was my new name. I was no more Max Slabotsky, and so I would not forget they made me sit and they tattooed it on my arm.”

He endured several beatings, once for approaching a Nazi guard instead of the “Kapo” or Jewish prison functionary. Meals of soup — “really, just vegetables, like celery, in water “— and bread were served once a day.

But he was young and he could work and was moved around from camp farm to camp farm, until Russian soldiers arrived.

“They gave us a cookie that had to be soaked in hot water so you could eat it,” he said. “I don’t know what they did. But I liked it. When you are that hungry, you like anything.”

He spent nine months in a hospital and returned to Brussels. He was 13 and he started working as a tailor. He was reunited with his brother and eventually they found their mother.

He moved to the U.S. in 1955 and his brother followed in 1957.

This is the fifth year the city has hosted a Holocaust Remembrance. It was part of the National Days of Remembrance, April 7 through 14.

staylor@sunjournal.com