As a child, Dr. Jack Terry, then known as Jakub Szabmacher, experienced the Holocaust in its full fury. He lost his parents, siblings, relatives, and friends. In the camps of Budzyn and Wieliczka, in his native Poland, and Flossenbürg, in Bavaria, he regularly witnessed officers kill prisoners on a whim, and he himself narrowly escaped death on several occasions. But he also saw the other side of humanity, and the support and protection of fellow prisoners was a major reason why he was able to survive. After the war, he came to America. He now lives in New York City, where he is a practicing psychoanalyst, and many of his patients are, like himself, Holocaust survivors.
In 2005, Dr. Terry's memoir was published as
Jakub's World: A Boy's Story of Loss and Survival in the Holocaust. Co-authored by Alicia Nitecki, whose grandfather was also interned at Flossenbürg,
Jakub's World stands as one of the outstanding works of Holocaust survivor literature to have appeared in recent years.
The noted Holocaust scholar Lawrence Langer has written of it, "This volume has considerable historical as well as literary merit. By resisting the temptation to turn their story into a struggle between heroes and villains, the coauthors of
Jakub's World create a much more honest report of one boy's painful fight to survive, leaving to the reader the challenging task of grasping how he managed to do so."
Dr. Terry's talk was the third event in the Holocaust Memorial Program at Oregon State University in 2006.
At OSU, we have observed Holocaust Memorial Week every year since 1987. This program grows from the belief that educational institutions can do much to combat prejudice of all kinds, and to foster respect for the diversity that is America, by promoting an awareness of the Holocaust, perhaps the most horrific historical indicator of the high cost of prejudice. It is particularly important to teach young people about the Holocaust, so that coming generations will not forget the lessons that a preceding one learned at such cost. This emphasis recalls the motto of the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum: "For the dead and the living, we must bear witness."
Holocaust Memorial Program | | Oregon State UniversityNote: Many captions have been auto-generated and may contain errors.
