DGTL Voices with Ed Marx - A Father's Day Tribute: Herbert Marx's Story

Episode Date: June 27, 2025

On this special episode of DGTL Voices, I interview my father, Herbert Marx, a Holocaust escapee. We discuss Herbert's early life and experiences during the Holocaust. The conversation also touches on the significance of Father's Day, virtual care experiences, leadership lessons from Herbert's time in the army, and a unique encounter with President George Bush. The episode concludes with reflections on family legacy and the need for peace in the world.

Thanks for tuning to Digital Voices podcast, where we chat digital transformation challenges and opportunities across healthcare and life sciences. And now, your host, Ed Marks. I want to welcome everyone to Digital Voices. This is our first ever Digital Voices podcast that's live streamed. We'll also be recording this as well, but we thought it would be fun to do a live stream so you can interact with our very special Father's Day episode guest Herbert Marks. Herb, welcome to digital voices.

Yeah, I'm glad to be here. So this is going to be a lot of fun for many different reasons. And you can interact with us. So my dad is, and we'll get into it, is a Holocaust, not just survivor, as my mom was as well, but a escapee of a concentration camp. If you ever had any questions for someone like that, you can put them in the chat function on LinkedIn. It will answer them. So you can put in comments.

You can ask questions. And we'll try to get to as many as possible. So we're going to start off like we always do. And that is, again, introduce our guest. It's actually my dad. So I love my dad. Happy Father's Day. No, thanks at us.

I have a. And who's your favorite kid? My favorite kid is Edward Mark. I'm actually the youngest of seven. I have awesome brothers and sisters. They're all pretty cool and we're all equal, of course. But it's just kind of fun to tease that way. So I want to talk about Father's Day on this particular episode

because about five years ago, I came and visited you in Colorado. And it was an impromptu visit. And I just put something out on LinkedIn. I said, go see Dad and had a picture of you and I. And got two and a half million impressions. And it really struck a nerve. And I realized how important it is for that relationship.

that's often strained in many families. So that's why I really wanted to do this. Dad, before we get going too far, I ask the same questions of all of our guests. What are your favorite songs? What songs do you like to listen to? I like to listen to songs from musicals, and my favorite song is actually all I ask of you

from Phantom of the Opera. And you sing that to your... I sing this to my girlfriend. As you know, I am a 91-year-old teenager. It's true. my dad acts like a teenager and we've went after sadly our you were married for 50 years to my mom and unfortunately she passed away but ever since that we've had to we've had as as your children had to had to treat you like a teenager because we had to make sure you didn't you know do anything

too too bad like we might have done when we were kids but yeah what about words that you live by or a quote are there some some things that how you live your life i try to live my life by being honest, staying out of trouble, not lying to people, and answer all questions about my life truthfully and not being ashamed of it. Yeah, because, you know, that's interesting. And that'll kind of lead into your story because we went, we took you back to Germany, kind of like on a tour to meet with all your friends that, you know, we had left Germany in 1970, early 70, mid-70s. And a couple of my sisters and I decided to take you back and to visit with all your friends

because everyone's getting older and you never know when you'll see them again. And it was at that time, actually, that for the first time, you shared with some of them your Jewish background and being an escapee because of the reasons that you started. So let's start at the beginning, Dad. When you were first born, tell us about your life.

Like you were born and then what happened? When I was six years old, I was put in a concentration camp in Southern Friends. and from the concentration camp, people helped me escape, and the German soldiers took me to a French orphanage in Toulouse, France. From Toulouse, they had to take me away because they found out that I was Jewish, so they took me to the French resistance, and the French resistance took me over the mountains into Switzerland.

And in Switzerland, they put me again into a Catholic orphanage until they found out that I was German, Jewish, and then they sent me to another. orphanage, a Jewish orphanage in Beliband, Switzerland. And it is from there that I came to the United States. When I came to the United States, I lived in New Jersey for about nine years. I lived with an uncle and aunt, a very orthodox Jewish. And then I got drafted into the United States Army as a German.

And they sent me back to Germany to occupy my own country. It was in Germany that they realized that I knew French and German and English, and they needed a interpreter. So they told me to come to the American Council in Munich. And all they did was they gave me a piece of paper, said, sign here. And then they said, congratulations, you are now an American citizen. It was also over there that I met a German lady who I later married. She gave me seven children.

Ed over here happens to be the youngest one. And the youngest one is normally the best, as you know. What can I say? And then after the, I released in the army for 20 years, and then I settled in Colorado, and I worked for 20 years at the Air Force Academy in Colorado. And then I was also very involved in the sports of soccer. I officiated soccer. And then I decided that I was a bachelor. I decided that I was looking for romance.

and then I saw on a dating side that there was a Jewish lady in Arizona who was Jewish and who put on her, but she would like to have a husband back, so I figured I'm going to chase her because she must come from a good marriage. But she did want to come up to Colorado. It was too high and too cold. So I moved down to Arizona, and this has been the best move that I made in my adult life. Yeah, since you got married to mom. Yeah.

So, yeah, so there's a lot to unpack there. So if you have any questions, feel free to put in comments and LinkedIn feed, and we will try to address some of those if you have any questions. So, Dad, you were about six years old. They said, hey, you got to go on a train, right? You thought you love trains as a little kid. So you got put on a train. What was that experience like?

Being on the train was really bad because we were in a cattle truck. And we were crowded. There was no fresh air, and the place stunk because there were no toilets. And people trampled over people who were sick. It was awful. Yeah, and so I've retraced those steps since then. I've gone to the camp. I've seen the railroad there.

And then from there, so that's where you escaped. And you were hidden away for actually three years in that particular, like a convent. And so I've gone back and to find that, that, comment, but then everyone else was ultimately taken to Auschwitz and never to be seen again, except for we actually do have one, my godmother, actually, after a couple years, they released her. So, and that's another story for another time. And so, yeah, so you took this experience. What did you, what did you learn from that experience, Dad? Like being a Holocaust, escapee and survivor, how does, how has that affected you as a person? Well, it affected me because I never got.

I never had a real family life because they took away my family, basically. And however, I was never mistreated, but I never could call anybody mom or dad. And that hurt later on when I came to the United States where everybody has a, I lived in New Jersey, everybody has a mom and a father, what have you, and I, I didn't have that. So that's what the Holocaust did to me. They basically took away my family life. So, Dad, what would you say to people today about Father's Day? Like, for those that have dads that are still around.

The Father's Day is very important, and it doesn't get as much importance as Mother's Day. So I would like to recommend that we do away with Father's Day and Mother's Day and change the name to Parents' Day and move the day to Father's Day away from June because mothers, they get so much more importance because school is still on in most states. So move the parents' day or Father's Day maybe into May as well or maybe one of the days in April. So we get equal time.

But Father's Day is also important. I live in a senior housing, and a lot of their residents over there are spending Father's Day this weekend, this Sunday. and the children have no time to visit them. It is very important that the children acknowledge the presence of dad. I enjoy when my son calls me, I'm also very lucky that he came to visit me. But apparently a lot of people, they put the old folks' father into a senior living or assisted living,

and we are well taken care of over there. However, we lack the companionship of a father. if only once a much. Yeah. Yeah, so the message is, and I know it's complicated because some people may not have a good relationship with their dad. There's a lot of reasons. But to the extent you can, go see your dad, go call your dad.

Of course, we love moms as well, but this is Father's Day. Go see your dad, call your dad. I think that's a message here. And speaking of Father's Day, before we move on to another topic like virtual care, Dad, I want to present you with a gift, my Father's Day gift to you. So this is a new book that, I wrote, came out May 30th, I wrote with many other people, but I was one of the editors. It's called Voice of Innovation for AI.

So in it, I have your name. So it's dedicated to you. And then also our family that all were, who didn't make it out of Auschwitz. And so it's written for you. So it says I dedicate this book to my dad, Herbert Marks, and then it goes on. Thank you. Thank you very much. I'm honored.

Yeah. So this is about you, dad, and all the royalties from. the sale, this book, go to Mayo Clinic to cure cancer because of mom, right? So when our mom, my mom died of ovarian cancer almost 15 years ago. And so since then, I've donated all the royalties to all the books to cure cancer and finally have a foundation set up there with Chris Ross. And so that's where all the money goes to try to find cures for cancer. So, so that's great. Yeah. So far, Dad, we talked about Father's Day and importance of Father's Day. Go reach out to your dad's extent that you still have them, or someone who is like your dad.

For those who don't maybe have a dad left or not a good role model of a dad, there might be someone else in your life that you could reach out to and contact. And then you shared your story about the Holocaust and escaping from the Holocaust. You know, one question before we moved to virtual care that some people had was, how did you escape? So you mentioned the soldiers took you, but what was the role, speaking of, Mother's Day. What was the role of your mom? My mom was an inmate at the camp, and she perhaps was overly friendly with the German soldiers. The German soldiers then put me on the back of a two-and-a-half-ton truck and covered me with tarpaulin and took me out of the concentration

camp, which is about 50 miles south of Toulouse, and took me to a Catholic orphanage in Toulouse. and thereby she eventually she saved my life. So one of the questions that someone in the audience has is how do you not hate, right? Because you had this horrible experience. You lose all your family. It's all stripped away and people did evil things. But you don't have hate in your heart. I cannot hate the German people for what happened during the Holocaust because most of the German people did actually not.

not know what was going on. Back then, they did not have all the electronic devices available that we have today, where today you can almost do something, and somebody else is going to take a picture of it or what have you. So the Germans got away with that because there was no electronic devices. Yeah. I like today. No Instagram or TikTok or social media to help sort of spread the word about the evil that was taking place.

So that makes a lot of sense. Yeah, so if you have other questions, please drop them. We're going to move on in topics, but you can ask a question about any topic, even if we've covered it already, and we'll come back to it. Let's talk about virtual care. You've been a guest on one of our programs before, Dad, during COVID, and you used a lot of virtual care.

Have you gone back to virtual care, or do you, how do you get your care today? No, I like to visit the doctor's office. I never cared for that telephone. Telemedicine. Telemedicine where the doctor had. ask you, how are you doing? They expect you to say, I'm doing fine. But then again, when I visit the doctor and they asked me, how are you doing?

I tell them today, if I was fine, I wouldn't be here. And then instead of saying that I'm good or what I feel bad, I tell them today, and I really do this. I tell them I'm in love. Love does cure. I think love does help the healing process. That's for sure. So everyone needs someone to love.

And again, you know, encourage people to reach out to their dads, to their families, and just make amends or whatever or just say hello, whatever needs to be done. But what about the convenience of virtual care, though? Wasn't it easier just to stay in your home and have telemedicine, then get in a car and then? Oh, definitely. It's a lot easier when the doctor calls you. And especially when you don't have transportation available, like I do not have at a present time,

it becomes more difficult. However, I still like the personal touch when you go to a doctor's office and they had the opportunity to have doctors come to my apartment. But somehow I saw the machines they brought to take x-rays or ultrasounds. They looked like they were old-fashioned as compared to what you see in a modern office

or what have you. So I prefer to go to a doctor And since I live in a senior housing, I got plenty of time. So I'm not limited to only be away for a couple hours to go back to work. I don't have to go back to work. In addition to love, the other thing, though, that helps keep you healthy in 91 being fully independent is you still work out. I still go at the senior place where I have. I go to aerobics, water aerobics, and we have...

I go to Tai Chi and exercises to help to prevent from falling or what have you. A lot of the exercises are done on chairs. However, the exercise on chairs is better than not doing any exercise at all. Yeah. Because the problem when you get older is that you don't want to fall down. Because when you fell down, you normally break something, a hip or joint or what happens. you. So the thing is, don't fall down. And by doing exercise, you're able to do that. And, Dad, you and my mom, you've had this long history of working out. You used to always get up

like at five o'clock in the morning or something ridiculous. My wife and I used to get up at five o'clock in the morning and then go to a gym together. And then after gym, we would have breakfast somewhere, and then we had two cars. So I went to work, and she went home. But by doing the exercise together, it's a little easier. Yeah. So back to virtual care and patient experience. So don't name the places.

Don't name the hospitals. But we talk about this a lot, and you were sharing even yesterday, we would call it coordination of care, but you described a situation where you had an appointment at one location, And then they, what happened next? Yeah, I had an appointment at one location and I was told I needed a blood test. The location had the blood test, but they said, I'm sorry, but we don't do these kind of test at this place. So I had to go to another location.

At the other location, I ran into the same problems. They told me, oh, I'm sorry, but we cannot do this over here. You have to go to the main hospital. So I went to the main hospital. So I was gone about six hours just trying for a blood test that took one minute. Yeah, and this is, again, coordination and care, and this happens all the time. And sometimes we don't see it because we're so busy doing whatever our functions are in health care. But we don't get to hear the patient experience.

And it's not very convenient, especially if you're an elderly patient and mobility is a little bit of an issue. You could be spending a whole day just to get a routine exam with your labs. and there's definitely a better way. And of course, when you go to different locations, strangely enough, they don't have all the information about you. And that's very difficult because you have to repeat everything. You give the medical facilities your information because you normally get a letter about what was done with you during this visit

and you give it to him, and you hope that they make a copy of them and put it on your records And I found out the other day, that is not the case. Yeah, this is funny because this is all unrehearsed. And so my dad now is bringing up, you know, the fact that we still struggle with interoperability. We call it interoperability, the exchange of information. And it's still such a huge problem despite all the money we've invested in technology and all that we talk about when it comes to patient experience,

we still struggle in some of the fundamentals like that. Hey, I want to spend the last couple minutes now talking about leadership. So, Dad, you were, I think you mentioned it in the beginning briefly, but you were a soldier, a leader, an NCO for 20 plus years in the army. You served in Vietnam. You served in combat. And tell us something about leadership that you learned. Well, you have to show the people that you lead.

You have to show you have to be a good example. and the example is not only professionally, but it's also personally. In other words, if you want people to follow you, to believe in you, you got to live a clean life and follow the directions and also be helpful and realize that some people need more help, some subordinates need more help than other ones do. And if you take care of your men, that they will go all out and support you in whatever is required to do. Yeah.

That's good leadership fundamentals, even back from the 60s in Vietnam era. It's the same today. So that's really well said. You also talked about officiating a little bit. So there's one kind of unique story. Everyone has their 15 minutes of fame. And yours would have been even bigger if social media was bigger back then, like we talked about earlier with horrific things that came out of Germany back in the 40s.

But you had an encounter with the President of the United States, and you're the only person that ever did what you're about to share with the President of the United States. So tell us about that story. In March of 1987, President George Bush came to Colorado Springs to give a speech because I didn't know this. But I was ready to start a girls' high school soccer game at Shire Mountain High School when all at once they started yelling,

Mr. Referey, don't start the game. So I saw two people in a black suit, yell referee, don't start. And right behind him was George Bush, dressed in a red warm-up pants and a white t-shirt. And the president comes onto the soccer field and lays down in the middle of the center circle and those warm-up exercises.

So I figured now what the heck is going on here. So after about five minutes, the president got up. He shook my hands and said, good afternoon, Mr. referee. I figured, well, I'm going to get you, baby. So I put my hand in my back pocket, and I pulled out my red card and said, and sir, this is for you. I gave him the red card. And I reported him to the Colorado High School Activities Association as being a red card for a soccer game. Yeah.

And so for those who don't know, red card is like you're ejected from the field, the game, and you're suspended. And so they did send a suspension letter to the White House. George Bush did respond. And he said, I played varsity soccer at Yale, I think it was, for four years. And in high school, never ever got a yellow card, yet alone a red card. And then I met President Bush Jr. a few years ago. And we reminisced about that story.

And he said, you know what? My dad probably deserved it. You know, it was super funny. Hey, we had another question come through as we kind of head towards the end here. So if you do have any other questions, please drop them in the comments section. We'll try to get to it as we end. Someone said to have you tell your favorite Ed Mark's story. Like, a story about me, like, do you have a story about me?

I guess that's the question. Well, my son, Ed was a typical teenager. He did a few things he shouldn't have done. But he paid the price for it. I did. But he's okay. He was never in jail or anything like this. I'm very proud of him.

I'm proud of all my children, actually. And I think that his mom, who has passed away and I, would be very proud today of all what our children have accomplished. Yeah, I would definitely agree with that. All of my brothers and sisters are super good humans, which is the most important part, and doing really good things in the world. And the legacy.

How many grandchildren do you have now? Oh, I got 18 grandchildren. and I have 17 great-grandchildren, so I got a big family. Yeah, blessed is the man whose quiver is full, I think is what it says in the Old Testament somewhere. So, Dad, I'm going to give you the last word. Any parting thoughts, ideas you want to share with the world this podcast as of May. So we're recording June 13, 2025. Last time we saw the stats in May, we're number eight on Apple under tech.

So huge audience, I think maybe about 10,000. What's a parting thought, anything you want to share? I am very concerned about the problem with the attack that happened in Iran and Israel. I am very much concerned also with the Holocaust survivors. And I just recently, just a week ago, I was one of several Holocaust survivors invited to turn the first shovel of Earth at the new Holocaust. Coast Museum that they're building in Phoenix, Arizona. But I hope that we don't get into any wars.

I meet a lot of veterans where I go, and war is awful. We need to find peace, lasting peace all over the world. Yeah, I think that's really well said. And we had one late breaking question come in, so we'll ask one more question, and then we'll wrap up. What's something about concentration camps that you think people might not know about, like any other insight? In the concentration where I was in the camp,

remember I was six years old. I saw people, I heard getting shot and fall over. I saw blood coming out from people. I said dogs jumping on people, but I didn't really know what it meant to die at the time. And I'd like to compare this with my children who played on the TV or on the computers with some games where they killed a whole bunch of people.

At my age, I did not realize what was really happening. Yeah, right, yeah, because, yeah, it's hard to process. Yeah, yeah, and you wouldn't have had that technology back then to even play out scenarios like that, like kids have been so dissentous. And I realized that people don't get the right food all the time in a concentration camp. I went where the German soldiers were eating, and I went through the trash, and I found leftovers in the trash and brought that trash to my mom's living quarry. and they were hungry because all they got was bread made me water, not milk.

Yeah. Yeah. Dad, you're an amazing man, amazing person. Amazing, Dad. I really appreciate you and I love you. And thank you for sharing with my audience on Digital Voices. It was a pleasure to be here. And all fathers, I wish you a happy Father's Day.

Happy Father's Day. Love you, Dad. Love you. Thank you for listening to Digital Voices Podcast with Edm. If you enjoyed this episode, Subscribe on your preferred streaming service and leave a rating and review. And most importantly, thanks again for listening.