Mr. Joe Diamond, a survivor of Auschwitz Concentration Camp, spoke to our 8th grade students on Friday, April 3 at West Middle School. This is the second year in a row where Christina Fettes (our long term substitute teacher in Social Studies) has organized the assembly for our 8th graders.
Joe Diamond is a Holocaust survivor who was born in Czechoslovakia but was taken to Auschwitz in 1944 with his family. Mr. Diamond was born in Czechoslovakia in 1929, in a small town of 15-20,000 people. Czechoslovakia was then a democracy, with citizens of many religions living together. His family grew grapes and made wine. In 1939, when World War II began, Czechoslovakia was allied to the US and England. Hungary invaded the country and a Nazi government was installed. The Jewish citizens were eventually persecuted and, in 1944, the town's Jews were rounded up and deported to Auschwitz in Poland. Joe and his father were sent to a labor camp, while his mother and little brother were immediately murdered in the gas chambers.
Months later, as the Soviet Army approached the camp, the Nazis forced the remaining prisoners on a death march to Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp near Berlin. In 1945, Joe was liberated by the US Third Army and he returned to his home town. Fearing what the Soviet forces might do, and learning that he had relatives in Buffalo, he arrived here in 1948.
Joe has served in the US Army in the Korean War, and eventually returned to his Czech hometown to find the Jewish community totally gone. He and his family live in Buffalo and represent the Greater Buffalo Holocaust Resource Center.
After his presentation our students were allowed to ask him specific questions. Mr. Diamond left sharing many words of praise regarding our teachers and students.
For more information on the Holocaust, please feel free to visit the Holocaust Resource Center of Buffalo. Sylvia Schwartz is the Executive Director and their address is:
1050 Maryvale Drive
BOCES Building
Cheektowaga NY 14225
(716) 634-9535
