An MSC ballroom was full of students listening to an 88-year-old survivor of five concentration camps of the Holocaust tell his story Tuesday night.
During the late 1930s and early 1940s, Max Glauben saw the tragedy of the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, labored at numerous concentration camps and participated in the infamous Dachau Death March. Since his liberation, he decided to pass on his story to others, even if many would not listen at first.
“When I was in Germany between ’45 and ’47, I learned English. So when I came to the States, I started speaking not any earlier than the seventies, because earlier on, some of the things that happened to us were sometimes unbelievable by the people here.”
Although Glauben has spoken to thousands of people about his experience, he said he started small.
“I started after I got married when my grandkids started to go to school, even went to third grade, fourth grade. And in an easy way, I tried to make them upstanders instead of bystanders by explaining in a nice way that it wouldn’t create any hate — the same hate that was applied toward us,” Glauben said.
Glauben hopes by sharing his story and educating others about the Holocaust, he might make the world a better place.
“The thing is that only true education and knowledge enables you to tell somebody of what has happened,”  Glauben said. “We possess the greatest computer that was ever created. The brain of each individual can do anything that’s been done and is needed to be done in this world. By true education, you have to want to learn. And that’s the only way that you can change this mechanism to be an upstander, and not a bystander.”
In spite of all that has been done to him, Glauben preaches a message of forgiveness and discourages hatred in the face conflict.
“If the people would just sit down and think about what they want to do, take an inventory of themselves, and maybe try to correct some of the bullying that they had done in the past, or maybe they don’t like somebody,” Glauben said. “In the Jewish religion, we go once a year to the person that we think we hurt, and we say, ‘Forgive us,’ And if we say that three times and they don’t forgive us, then the sin is on them.”
The audience responded to Glauben’s story and message with a standing ovation. Noah Thompson, psychology sophomore, said Glauben’s message resonated with him.
“I learned a lot about human perseverance listening to him speak. Even though this man has been through so much, he’s filled with so much joy,” Thompson said. “He really wants to give this message of constant learning, constant knowledge to all those future generations. Despite what he’s gone through, he’s still joyful.”
International studies freshman Isabella Adams also spoke of Glauben’s perseverance.
“It’s very inspiring that people who go through such horrific things can still have hope and maintain that hope and try to pass it on to other people,” Adams said. “What others should take from this is, like he said: Never, ever give up. People are stronger when they put their minds to things.”