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THE JEWISH
STAR
VOL 12, NO 8 Q FEBRUARY 22, 2013 / 12 ADAR, 5773
Protecting the future
WWW.THEJEWISHSTAR.COM
Jack Ratz, Holocaust survivor, teacher, zayda
By Anna Hardcastle Following the tragedy at Sandy Hook Elementary School in December of 2012, issues beyond gun control reform were debated and brought to the forefront of American politics. Citizens across the nation were blatantly alerted to the reality and necessity of protecting the children in our schools in order to prevent the murder of twenty more innocent school children. Ideas have emerged across the board to increase security measures at both our public and private schools. Some extremists have proposed not only hiring additional security guards, but also arming teachers and administrators with guns and weapons in order to be more readily prepared to respond to an attack. A Tennessee senator has recently introduced a bill requiring the presence of an armed officer, teacher or staff member in every public school. Additional legislation has also been proposed elsewhere, such as in South Dakota, where a bill was passed in the House on January 29, 2013 to allow school districts to arm teachers and personnel with weapons. More mild and easily-attainable ideas, however, call for increasing the number of lockdown drills performed in schools as well as the efficiency of such drills. While many schools routinely performed lockdown drills at least once a year prior to the Sandy Hook Massacre, state legislatures across the United States have since been stressing the necessity to regularly perform such security precautions. In order to simulate the anxiety and distress of an emergency, staff at a school in Illinois fired blanks throughout hallways during a lockdown drill last month. This unique incident was intended to familiarize the students and teachers with the terrifying sounds of gunshots in the event that an emergency should occur. On a more local level, yeshivas across Long Island have been expanding and more firmly implementing their security measures. Great Neck’s North Shore Hebrew Academy High School has been employing lockdown
By Malka Eisenberg Jack Ratz is a man on a mission. The 88 year old Holocaust survivor harnessed his will to survive during the war years in Europe and now continues to muster his strength to tell his story, to speak the truth and educate, to shed light where there is darkness and denial. He lives in his tidy Brooklyn home, surrounded by comfortable chairs and the mementos of the Shoah, his many laudatory letters from his speaking engagements, awards, certificates of appreciation and treasured photographs of his family, past and present. He speaks with a slight European accent, and stands about five feet tall, barrel chested, an image of strength in spite of some difficulty breathing and walking. His eyes are bright, warm yet worried. He wears a gray knitted kipa proclaiming “supper cool” on his thick gray hair, and clearly, the hand made cards from students across the United States back that up. Ratz survived the war with his father, but lost an older brother to the war when he fought with the Russian army against the Nazis in Moscow, and lost his mother and three younger brothers when they were shot along with over 30,000 other Jews when the Nazis “liquidated” the Riga ghetto in 1941. That Ratz survived against all odds and had hair-raising gutsy escapades with miraculous brushes with death are the stuff of movie making. He has told his life’s stories to his children and grandchildren repeatedly over the years; it both colors and frames his life and outlook, as well as those of his children and grandchildren. “I grew up with the stories all the time, every Friday night,” recalled Dr. Jeffrey Ratz, Jack Ratz’s youngest son. “He was lucky, he took a lot of risks and never got caught.” Jeffrey noted that both he and his wife Pearl are children of survivors and feel that it is “important to carry on their message.” He also said that his son Mathew “spent a lot of time with my father” and that Mathew and Jack “collaborated on reprinting” Jack’s book and Mathew wrote the afterword. Jack Ratz decided to begin telling his story to wider audiences about 30 years ago when he and his wife Doris, a”h, were at a hotel in Florida. Jack and Doris, he still calls her “my girl,” were married 57 years. “A man came to tell his story of hiding in the Nazi era,” he recalled. “I thought, ‘if he can do it, I can do it.’ I wanted people to now.” He plays a DVD that a school made of his story and sits watching, shaken and tearful. “There are less and less people to tell the story,” he said. “This is my mission.” Since then, he has delivered his message to Jewish and secular schools, synagogues, and meetings. He displays letters of gratitude from
JACK RATZ students, teachers, administrators, from Senator Daniel Patrick Moynihan and Mayor Michael Bloomberg. Jack was born in Riga, Latvia in 1925. The Russians attacked Latvia June 1940—a few months later his family celebrated his bar mitzvah in secret. At that time, Jack’s oldest brother was conscripted into the Soviet army. His family never saw him again. In August, all Jews in the outlying areas were killed. Between then and the end of 1941, the Nazis isolated a ghetto in Riga and segregated a smaller ghetto within the larger ghetto for able-bodied men aged 16 and up. The Nazis then slaughtered the remaining 30,000 Jewish men, women and children in the larger ghetto section, swept it clean of corpses and refilled it with Jews from Germany, Austria and Czechoslovakia also destined for Continued on page 3
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