Born Itzek Markowski in Poland in 1924, and known in his youth as “Prisoner 144346,” Jack Marcus died Tuesday in Milwaukee. A tailor by trade, he spent his retirement by speaking at schools about the Holocaust.
The Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel tells his story here.
Briefly summarized, when German soldiers came to his town, he hid in a haystack and watched as his parents were killed in a gas van. (These vehicles were altered to pipe engine exhaust into the passenger compartment.)
The teenaged orphan made his way to a labor camp and later was sent to work at Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he subsisted on meagers ration of thin soup and bread. He saw his uncle arrive at Auschwitz, who he later learned was immediately gassed. In the winter of 1945, he and other Jews were transferred to Germany in an open coal train, many dying from cold and hunger along the way. He was liberated at Dachau by American soldiers, and emigrated to America in 1950.
His son said Marcus recognized he had an “obligation to make sure future generations knew what happened. He saw more death than any of us can imagine.”
Is our nation now going to shut its doors to refugees fleeing from war, tyranny, and murder?
Photo: Jack Marcus is walking next to the soldier with the rifle