Valencia Students Aghast at Atrocities : Bergen-Belsen Survivor Describes SS

The Valencia junior high school students stared wide-eyed Monday as Barry Spanjaard told them what it was like to be a teen-ager at the brutal World War II Nazi concentration camp that President Reagan visited Sunday in West Germany.

Spanjaard, 55, should know. He is the only American-born Jew known to have survived captivity at the Bergen-Belsen death camp.

The teens gasped as Spanjaard told of how Nazis stripped away Jews’ civil rights and SS guards murdered millions. And they nodded after he explained why the President’s weekend memorial visit to Bergen-Belsen is viewed by many as an empty gesture.

Spanjaard and others were upset because, after leaving the concentration camp, Reagan visited the Bitburg cemetery, where 49 SS combat soldiers are among the 1,887 buried war dead.

“There was a tremendous difference between the SS men and the regular German army in World War II,” Spanjaard told the youngsters. “The German army fought honorably against us and we fought honorably against them, and to make peace between those two is fine.

“But the SS was a completely different situation. The SS was responsible for the killing of 11 million people, which had nothing to do with warfare. I’m not talking about soldier killing soldier; I’m talking about SS men killing civilians merely because they were Jewish. And the SS had their own way of treating American prisoners of war: they lined them up and machine-gunned them to death.”

‘Places He Could Have Gone’

Because of the cemetery visit, many Jews feel the Bergen-Belsen stopover was a letdown and an insult, the retired Canyon Country salesman told nearly 500 eighth-graders jammed into the Arroyo Seco Junior High School auditorium.

“There are probably a hundred places he could have gone to in Germany to accomplish what he set out to accomplish--reconciliation. As far as most Germans are concerned, we were reconciled 40 years ago with the Marshall Plan and the Berlin Airlift,” Spanjaard said, referring to the American plan to rebuild the shattered economy of Germany and the rest of Europe, and to the postwar airlift of supplies to Berlin when the Soviets cut off land routes to that city.

“What do we have to apologize for? They started the war and they killed millions outside of normal warfare.”

Spanjaard’s own run-in with Nazis came as the result of his family’s Dutch business. Although born in New York City, he was taken by his Netherlands-born parents to Amsterdam at age 3. The family was living there when the Germans invaded that country in 1940.

He and his father and mother were taken into custody by the SS in 1943, spending a year in a temporary German prison camp before being shipped by railroad cattle car to Bergen-Belsen. After a year there, the family was released--swapped in a Red Cross-engineered trade for five captured Nazi army officers. The Nazis said they were released because young Spanjaard was an American citizen.

Spanjaard wrote an account of his prison camp experiences in 1946 but kept the writings locked in a trunk until 1978. His “Don’t Fence Me In!--An American Teenager in the Holocaust” has sold 15,000 copies since then and is in its sixth printing.

Since publishing the book, Spanjaard has devoted his retirement to talking about the Holocaust to organizations and school groups. Monday’s talk was his 603rd, he said.

“I didn’t come here to turn you against the Germans,” he told his audience, “just to tell you what happened to me. In 15 years, there won’t be anyone who went through it left to tell you about it. It’s up to you young people to see that nothing like this ever, ever happens again.”

Message Clear

Afterwards, teen-agers indicated that Spanjaard’s message had come through clearly.

“I don’t think he was putting down the Germans, just the Nazis,” said Andy Angulo, 14. “I had thought before this that the Germans had done it. I didn’t know Nazis were meaner.”

As for Reagan’s Bitburg cemetery visit: “I don’t understand why he’s honoring the people who did the dirty work,” Andy said.

Classmate Ken Abbott, 13, said Reagan “should be honoring the Jews. They died for no reason. He should also be honoring the Americans who went over there to fight.”

Found Copy of Book

Ken said he found a copy of Spanjaard’s book in an English class and has begun reading it. “It’s hard to imagine something of that magnitude happening,” he said of the Holocaust. “We’re supposed to be reading Anne Frank’s book. But his is a lot more shocking.”

However, other students said they see a distinction between the forgiving that Reagan supports and the forgetting that Spanjaard fears.

“Like Mr. Spanjaard said, we should never forget what happened there, not even after 100 years,” said Melinda Sotelo, 13. “But now’s the time to forgive. Those people are dead. There’s no point in being prejudiced against their children.”