While Lookout Eugene-Springfield did a wonderful job giving voice to the protesters in its coverage of the March 28th No Kings protest, there was one voice missing that I had the privilege of hearing.

I was out collecting signatures at the event, and I approached an elderly man to solicit a signature. I gave my spiel, then asked if he wanted to sign. He expressed reluctance, but seemed friendly enough. We made small talk. Then, noticing he had a foreign accent, I asked him where he was from. It was then that he revealed his life story. Born in the Netherlands to a Jewish family, he detailed how he had survived the Buchenwald concentration camp in the wake of the Holocaust.

Shipped there in September 1944, and only one of a few survivors when it was liberated, he detailed the experiments that he underwent at the hands of sadistic doctors. He also showed me his right hand, which was missing the middle finger, and told me the concentration camp workers had broken it during one of these experiments. Focusing on the positive, however, he said that he was fed better after the injury (so they could keep experimenting on him), enabling him to survive. Another time, he fought back by biting one of the doctors, who then punished him severely (he did not elaborate). Miraculously, his parents and two siblings also survived the Holocaust.

What struck me the most about the interaction was the candid and matter-of-fact demeanor this man maintained as he was retelling the horrors that he lived through, yet how he retained his optimism and strength through it all. Nowhere was this seen more than in his very presence at the protest. A man who had lived through the darkest chapter of humanity, only to rise again to resist fascism here in the U.S. His story stands as both an inspiration to keep fighting, and a warning about the dangers that we could face if we continue down our current path, spoken by one of only a few remaining living testaments.

Let his story not be wasted.

Erica Lyon
Eugene