Holocaust survivor speaks at Bethel Park High School

Celebrating an 89th birthday is quite the feat of longevity for anyone, let alone Howard Chandler.
“In my wildest dreams, I never thought I’d reach that age and be able, as I am now, physically and mentally,” he said.
Physically, he stood on the stage of the Bethel Park High School auditorium for the better part of 45 minutes to tell a key part of his life’s story. Mentally, that involved reaching back more than 75 years for an impressively detailed account of what he went through as a Polish Jew during World War II.
“It happened a long time ago,” he told a group of students and teachers during his Dec. 6 presentation. “Unfortunately, the way things are going in the world, it’s never stopped happening. We never seem to have learned the lesson. And this is why it is important for you young people, and me, to share everything.
“It is not an easy thing for me,” Chandler, who now lives in Toronto, continued. “But it’s a very necessary thing, I think.”
He started by describing his situation around the time he turned 10, on Dec. 5, 1938.

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Howard Chandler speaks at Bethel Park High School
“We were a regular family living in a small town about a hundred miles south of Warsaw, living a normal life in Poland, where the great majority of the population was Catholic,” he recalled. “Prior to the war, things were getting a little bit worse between the Christian and the Jewish population due to the advent of German propaganda.”
The Germans, themselves, arrived in the Starachowice-Wierzbnik, where the Chandlers lived two doors from the local market square, following the Nazi invasion in September 1939. Howard soon learned that as Jewish children, he and his younger brother, Sam, no longer would be able to attend school.
“He was the brightest in the class, and everybody knew Sam. Everybody wanted to be friends with him, because he was outstandingly, frighteningly smart,” his brother recalled. “Only God knows what contribution he would have made to humanity had he not been murdered at the age of 11 years or 12 years.”
As Chandler’s story continued to unfold with similarly unsettling revelations, his tone remained calm and matter-of-fact, belying the horrors he witnessed as a boy younger than the high school sophomores and juniors in his audience.
And as a boy, he enjoyed playing with his former classmates, some of whom lived outside the small area of Starachowice-Wierzbnik to which the Germans had confined the Jewish residents.
“To go outside the confines of the ghetto, you had to be pretending that you’re not Jewish. So I had to take my armband off to go to the other side of town and play with them,” Chandler said. “But my parents didn’t know that I was taking my armband off. To be caught, or pointed out by a boy that maybe I had a fight with and I beat him up, they would have shot me.”
For a while, the Chandlers were staying somewhat ahead of the struggle. Howard’s father, mother, sister and older brother were granted work permits, and Sam went to live with a Christian family.
His father was able to secure a permit for Howard:
“At that time, I was not quite 14 years of age. So I’m sure he must have lied and maybe bribed somebody in the administration to say that I was 16 years of age, and I also got employment in the factory.”
That was in 1942, and on the way to work one day, “I noticed soldiers in town, in the market square, soliders I’d never seen before,” he said. “They shouted that all the Jewish population should assemble in the market square.”
He recalled the scenario is his unwaveringly calm manner.
“The men were separated from the women and the children, and those holding work permits were ordered to assemble on one side of the market square, on the sidewalk,” Chandler said. “I followed my father and figured that my mother and sister would also be separated from the rest of the population, having these work permits. But that never happened.”
What did happen is that Sam appeared in the square, having been identified as Jewish by the family who was supposed to protect him.
“As the day progressed,” Howard said, “about four and a half thousand inhabitants, the Jewish people from this town, were marched down to a waiting train – including my mother, my sister and my younger brother – taken away, never to be seen or heard of again.”

Harry Funk / The Almanac
Harry Funk / The Almanac
Howard Chandler turned 89 on Dec. 5.
He went on to tell about his continued existence despite atrocious living and working conditions, in Starachowice-Wierzbnik and after he was taken to the Auschwitz II-Birkenau concentration camp. His older brother, Harry, also survived the war.
“The majority of the people, including my extended family, did not, and there is no sign that these people ever existed,” Howard reflected.
His presentation was brought to the school by Classrooms Without Borders, a Pittsburgh-based provider of experiential professional development for teachers through study seminars that take place outside of the classroom.
“You are the last generation to actually bear witness and hear the story,” board member Hilary Tyson told the students about the firsthand account of a Holocaust survivor.
Junior Vincent Vituccio said he appreciated the opportunity.
“I really think that sometimes, learning about it so much in school, we get a little bit desensitized toward it, he said. “But hearing it coming from him really makes you realize what a tragedy it was and how big of a problem this was back 75 years ago.”