The Moth - I’m Still Here: Albert Hepner

Episode Date: October 6, 2023

On this episode, we share a story about resilience, survival, and one child’s experience in the holocaust. Stick around after the story for an interview with Albert Hepner, where we’ll talk to him about his life after the war, what we can take away from his experiences, and so much more. This episode is hosted by director and producer Michelle Jalowski, who also directed Albert’s story. Storyteller: Albert Hepner

Welcome to the Moth Podcast. I'm Michelle Jolowski, a director and producer at the Moth, and your host for this episode. We're going to be sharing a very special story with you today. It's a story about survival and resilience and one child's experience in the Holocaust. Albert Hepner told this at a Moth main stage in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Stick around after the story for an interview with Albert, where I'll talk to him about his life after the war, what we can take away from his experiences and so much more. Here's Albert, live at the mall.

It's 1940. I'm five years old. I'm lying in bed. It's a Wednesday night. The night my father and three of his buddies are playing cards. And I'm doing pretty well, sleeping, used to the noise that they make, and suddenly there's a big noise that sounds like thunder. And I wake up to it and I see my father jumping up to shut the lights and close the curtains.

And he's looking at what sounded to me like thunder was for the adults, some bombing outside of Brussels, Belgium. And my father says, sacamois, which means it's starting. I suppose it was the first time that I realized something, something was wrong and I felt affected by it, but I really, I just didn't know. I just felt terribly affected by it.

Very soon thereafter, my father dies of natural causes. And I'm in first grade and two Gestapo men, they were certain garb that said we all knew Gestapo men barged in and the teacher asked what he want. And they said they're here to take out three Jewish children. This was the first grade. I didn't really know what it meant but I felt a pit in my stomach. I felt like they were talking about me somehow and they called out one name and then I was sure I was going to be called out, and I was the third name. Three of us were taken to the principal's office by the Gestapo. Our mothers were waiting in the principal's office, and they were told to just take us out. My mother, a dramatic woman, just screamed all the way,

going back home for about eight blocks, and all I felt was rejected, nothing wanted, and I didn't quite understand, but I really didn't know what was meant by Jewish and she screamed all the way home recklessly really because we could have gotten picked up. A cousin mine, Muttle, was a doctor in the hospital in Brussels. He came to the house where my mother and my brother and I were living, and he approached my mother and said that he had to take me away so he could hide me because things were

getting very bad. And so that my mother and my brother could escape without me being a burden there. She was holding me very tight, more than ever, tighter than ever. And he just literally ripped me out of her arms and to his. And it wasn't so bad for me because I always loved him.

He had always been very, very good to me. So I didn't understand what was going on, but I knew it was something terrible going on. He took me and for a few blocks to a local church, and we went in the back door, it seemed, and there we met what turned out to be a de-priest, a very so gentle man. My mother, my cousin said to him that I was Albert and that he said to me, just listen to this man, do whatever he says. The priest took me by the hand.

We walked a couple of stories down the sub-basement and the damnacarder and into what seemed, I didn't realize it was a door. We walked in. It was a room with six Cots and five boys lying in the Cots The priest put me in one of the Cots and said he would tell me More the next day

I Wasn't there very long because I wasn't there very long because someone had told on the priest that he was hiding Jewish kids. So fortunately, Martin, as a doctor, had been given a lot of leeway, and at the same time he had taken advantage and become part of the underground. So he heard from somebody in the underground that there was a raid that was going to happen at the church. So, a muttletame grabbed me, we ran out last last second, literally, and he started what turned out to be, to take me to a place where it was one of several places where I was going to be hidden.

A very nice couple, I was with them for a few weeks, and I sit very often the afternoon and look out in the street and I feeling like why can I belong somewhere. And there were some children who came out of what seemed to be a Catholic school. They were playing, they were shooting novels on sidewalk, and I really wondered why can I be like them, why can I be like them? Why can I be there with them? And I really didn't understand what was going on. But after a while, the kids, one of the kids saw me looking at them.

So he waved to me. I waved back to him, and this went on for quite a few days until an older man who knew evidently the people who were hiding me, he knew that they didn't have children. So I guess they told Markle and they were afraid to keep me there because somebody would talk about it. So again I was taken away. He took me several places until I guess he ran out of places

to take me to and took me to his own apartment. I didn't know that he had a girlfriend. When we walked in, this woman, Marie Louise, she'd like ran to me and grabbed me and held me so tightly and so softly and so nicely it was the first time that I felt like maybe I belonged here. And she really took care of me most of the time that I was hidden with them. And she even tried to teach me how to tie my shoelaces. And I was all the time that she was trying to teach me

how to tie my shoelaces. I kept looking at her. She was beautiful and soft and gentle and laughing. And it felt very good. And she said, look over here. And I never really looked anywhere. And so I really never learned there to tie my shoelaces. So more time there, things got worse and worse

in the cities and the controversies. And so Mark thought that it would be better for me to be outside of Brussels, where it was getting more dangerous. So he had, he had me sent to a convent in Namur, which was a sudden Belgium. And the next day or two, after I got there, a nun came over and said very strictly, Mother Superior wants to see you.

And so I just went with her. I followed her to a long carada and very sinister looking. The whole thing and we walked in and just the way she had been sinister so as Mother Superior, she said, you're going to be an altar boy. And if anybody asks you if you're Jewish, deny it. And again, I really didn't understand, because I didn't understand what Jewish was, but I knew what the deny was. I did my job as a good boy. I became a good old-to-boy.

I was there for two years. And after two years, at one time, one of the nuns approached me. And again, I've never been in a mother's superior's office since that first time, but a nuns said that mother's superior wanted to see me again. So I went and but this time I walked in, she was like, all smiles, she says, oh, I have good news for you. You're going back to Brussels and you'll see your mother and everything will be better.

I didn't know what she was talking about, for sure, because I didn't, I had no contact with anybody else outside of the convent. The woman that brought me there from the underground brought me back to Brussels. My brother came back, he had run away to Switzerland and he came back from a work camp in Switzerland. So the three of us sort of got things settled and we were getting better for us at the end, nearing the end of the war. When the war was over, many of the young people who are similar situations. We formed groups with the idea of going to Israel, we all became Zionists, right away, with the hope to find a place

where we wouldn't be hated, where we wouldn't not belong. And so often we have a good time getting ready for it. But we also started talking about some of the things that had happened to us during the war. And here I really felt a no time at all that there was, whatever confidence I might have had. I lost all the confidence because I tell my story that it was hidden and okay, I didn't eat very much,

we starved so because they had no food in the convent to speak of and that was the worst thing. But I survived and I sort of did okay and some of the other guys would talk about people they'd lost their concentration camps and family they had burned. And so I felt like I didn't have, I couldn't even talk with them.

I really didn't want to talk anymore. I was, I felt like, again, I really didn't belong. It's like whatever was happening, it didn't work for me. Finally, my mother and I, her sister, after to move to the United States, which we did. And as time went on, I found it easier to talk about. I discovered some, how to deal with some introspection and how to be a better person, feeling more like I belonged to what was going on. And I really, I was able to talk about more.

And ultimately, I just felt like I belonged. And I wound up living like now for 60 years in the same house, which I know is definitely related to these periods where I had been like strewn away from one place to another. I never felt very secure. But now I see my time in the house as a place where I do belong, and where I feel we all need to have a place

where we belong. That was Albert Heppner. We ask all of our storytellers to send us a bio to read. This was the one he sent us. We think it's pretty special. 82 years ago, Hitler thought I should not roam this planet. Gentiles hid me in churches, homes, and a convent in Belgium. I thought I had done something wrong and felt guilty my entire life. Hitler, you failed.

I wanted to hear more from Albert about his story and about his life after the events he described. So I sat down to talk with him. Hi, Albert. Thank you for coming in to do this. My pleasure. First, let's say, today is a special day, a special anniversary. Yes. Yes. Do you want to tell us what what today is? Today is the 73rd anniversary of my arrival to the United States from Belgium. Dang, it's so crazy

that we're doing it on this day. Like what's her identity? Oh, I remember you told me so you got moved around to I want I'm wondering like how many places that you remember that you got moved around to and also if there was anywhere that you liked, anywhere that you stayed, where you liked the people that you were with. Okay, I got moved around to a couple of different churches to about six different homes, people's Gentiles homes. And I got moved around to a farm and I got moved to a conference for two years. The place I loved that I liked the most

was one apartment, was a couple, a man and a woman. He was deaf and she was mute. Those were my only two contacts. I was barely, I was like six and a half, seven years old. We lived on their apartment. We lived on a third floor, and they made furniture, straw furniture. And the course of my stay there, which is quite a few weeks, I learned how to make straw furniture.

They taught me how. And they were sign language. I don't know that I ever learned any sign language to speak of. I spoke and shook my head a lot and my hands and arms. But the woman was particularly sweet, very, very charming, very nice to me. Our husband could have lived without me. So it was all clear in the gestures. And what I loved is that I did stuff.

I did things. They showed me how to make chair furniture, and I did parts of it. And the other thing that Wanda being a very positive thing was, later afternoon, I would often just sit outside at the window and I'd look out. And there was a Catholic elementary school right across the street that was letting out. I would guess 3 p.m. or something like that. And kids would be coming out and they'd play marbles on the sidewalk. They'd draw a square rectangle and they don't play mobiles.

I'd look at them and I envy what they were doing, and that I had no young people to be friendly with. But after a while, after several days, one of the kids looked up, saw me, waved, I waved back, and we became distant friends, but others started waving as well. And so, you know, I enjoyed from afar, but then it turned out to be, the tragedy was that a Neldilly man, not as old as I am now, but a Neldilly man, not as old as I am now, but a Neldilly man who was observing the kids playing shooting marbles, noticed that the kids were waving to me.

He looked up and he knew the apartment that I was staying in. He also knew that the couple had no children. So as soon as the people who were keeping me discovered this, he actually disman asked him if I was a relative from out of town that was staying with them. And I don't know exactly what they said, but they did call my cousin who was a doctor and also in the underground. He's the one who had placed me there. So they called him and told him that they were very worried that this guy would denounce me. My favorite place. Every other place was pretty

bad. What happened to your cousin after the war? Well, he ultimately, he was one of ten doctors that were finally taken from the hospital to a concentration camp in Germany. In Germany, what we heard, our family heard about him, is that he was asked while in the camp, to take care, they would let him take care of Jewish, in turn people, if you promised to take care of the soldiers as well. He did, and he did that until, I support back coincidence, until two days before the camps were liberated,

whatever happened, we were told by the nine doctors who made it back. He didn't make it back because he committed suicide. He told them that he would not take care of the Germans anymore. So they told them that they started beating them up. The other doctor said that the next day he committed suicide. The war essentially for that camp ended a day later. I'm not dramatizing it. This is the way I was told about it. That's so hard to hear. I lot about how you didn't want to talk about it. There was a long time where you couldn't talk about it. So I wonder if you can tell us a little bit about how did it feel to...

I know it was a hard process for you to like, dredge off of the... No, it was... Well, you asked me a lot of difficult questions. And but the thing is, you helped me, you directed me and hanging on to what was important, which I, it felt trying.

I think it's because you dealt with some depth. Not things that I didn't know and not really things that I didn't want to talk about, but just things that I really talked about. And I took it that you wanted in a meaningful way and I hope that's what happened. That isn't having you amazing. that you wanted in a meaningful way and I hope that's what happened. That isn't having any reason. Is there any other anything you feel like you have not said or wanted to say or would want included when the story airs?

Simply that I'm very glad that you folks and some other folks out there are having these stories somewhat reiterated because there are quite a few people including I've spoken to many schools, many schools, many classes and let me tell you there are a lot of people who have in the clue. Thank you so much for doing this Albert. It's such a joy to have you in the studio. And yeah, your story is so important, and we're just so thrilled to got you shared it with us. Thank you for doing this. As someone who lost family members in the Holocaust,

it was especially moving to talk with Albert about his experiences. And we want to thank him for his generosity in sharing the story with us. That's all for this episode. From all of us here at The Moth, have a story worthy week. Michelle Jolowski is a producer and director at The Moth, where she helps people craft and shape their stories for stages all over the world.

She also directed Albert Hepner's story. This episode of The Moth Podcast was produced by Sarah Austin-Gines, Sarah Jane Johnson, and me, Mark Sellinger. The rest of The Mouth's leadership team includes Sarah Haberman, Jennifer Hickson, Meg Bulls, Kate Tellers, Marina Klucche, Suzanne Rust, Brandon Grant Walker, Leigh Ann Gully, and Aldi Kasa. All Mouth stories are true, as remembered by the story tellers. For more about our podcast, information on pitching your own story,

and everything else, good or our website, TheMouth.org. The Mouth podcast is presented by Pierre X, the Public Radio Exchange, helping make public radio more public at PierreX.org.