Gering Man Believes Parents Killed by "Ivan the Terrible'
Irving Shapiro said he never saw "Ivan the Terrible,'' but he suspects his parents did encounter the Nazi concentration camp official.
Shapiro, a Gering businessman who spent time at German concentration camps, said at Chadron State College that had he seen him, "I wouldn't be here today.''
Shapiro, 65, said he believes his parents encountered the man who operated the Nazi gas chambers at Treblinka during World War II.
John Demjanjuk, a retired auto worker, was convicted in Jerusalem earlier this month of being Ivan the Terrible and killing tens of thousands of Jews. He was sentenced to death.
Some 850,000 Jews were put to death in 1942 and 1943 at Treblinka, Shapiro said, including his parents.
Shapiro said his mother was the first in his family to be taken to Treblinka. His father followed a few months later. Shapiro never heard from them again.
His younger brother was taken there but survived and operates a railroad car repair shop in Gering. Shapiro's wife, who died in 1978, also spent several years in concentration camps.
Shapiro himself was sent to a concentration camp in 1942 and was forced to serve as an interpreter for the Gestapo. By 1943, Shapiro said, he weighed only 70 pounds.
"I knew if I ever fell down I would never be allowed to get up,'' he said.
Shapiro said he was kept in six different concentration camps. His duties included sifting through ashes of those who had been cremated to find the gold in teeth, disposing of bodies of poisoned women, building tunnels in a mountain so German machine shops could be hidden and skinning rats so hides could be used for German fur coats.
Shapiro said he spent nearly 30 years in the United States before he began telling his story.
""I do this so people may know what went on,'' he said. "It was the darkest moment in the history of man.''
