Holocaust Survivor Speaks to Valley View Students

Submitted by Valley View School District 365U

Photo: Holocaust survivor George Levy Mueller shares his experiences with 8th graders at Humphrey Middle School.

“I heard a woman yell ‘We’re free! We’re free!’” And with that, Russian soldiers freed Holocaust survivor George Levy Mueller and his sister from a six year journey that took them from their home in Germany to three different concentration camps.

Mueller related his fascinating story to Humphrey Middle School eighth-graders last week, telling the students about vicious guards, constant beatings, sleeping conditions that included wooden blank beds and straw mattresses, poor food, terrible sickness and unbearable cold.

“We were always hungry and very dirty,” he said. “But the worst thing was standing and watching people boarding transports to death camps. It was horrible to see people saying goodbye to each other.”

The 85-year-old Mueller, who now lives in Glen Ellyn, captivated students with the story of his journey from a happy 8-year-old living in Germany to a teenager in concentration camps.

Near the end of his ordeal “I was so weak I could hardly stand up” and he was so hungry he gnawed on a piece of wood even as hundreds of lice filled his body.

Mueller’s sad tale began in 1938 when, as an 8-year-old Jewish youngster living in Germany with his parents and sister in a nice house, his father and uncle were taken to a concentration camp. A year later his mother sent Mueller and his sister to Holland to escape from the Nazi atrocities.

A guardian took charge of them in Holland where they stayed in a convent with nuns who were part of the “underground resistance.” But a year later the Germans overran Holland and they made all Jewish people wear a yellow star.

In 1943, after going into hiding for a while, Mueller and his sister were sent to Vught Concentration Camp in Holland.

“It was like walking from day into night,” he said. “The food was terrible. It was dirty. It was crowded. There were a lot of beatings.”

In September 1943, they were moved to another concentration camp in Holland and in 1944 they took a “transport” to the same camp in Germany where Anne Frank died.

“It was really, really cold there and everybody was sick,” Mueller said as he recalled wearing shoes and clothing with holes in them and feces everywhere. In April 1945, he and his sister boarded “the lost transport” which wandered around Germany for 13 days, stopping only to bury the dead…and there were many who died because there was no food and “we were crowded like sardines.”

Liberation came on the 13th day.

“It was one of the happiest days of my life,” Mueller said.

Mueller came to America in 1947.