Ben Stern was a Holocaust Survivor who moved to the United States and opposed Neo-Nazis well into his 90s.
- Died: February 28, 2024 (Who else died on February 28?)
- Details of death: Died in Berkeley, California, at the age of 102.
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Ben Stern’s legacy
Stern was 17 when the Nazis invaded Poland. He and his family were among the Jewish people from his neighborhood who were forcibly moved to the Warsaw Ghetto before being sent to concentration camps. The number “129592” was tattooed on his arm and his family was killed at Treblinka. Stern himself narrowly escaped being chosen for death at Auschwitz, and he ultimately survived through nine concentration camps before being rescued by American soldiers.
Stern soon met and married Chayah “Helen” Kielmanowicz. The pair moved to the U.S. in 1946, the horrors of the Holocaust in their past but never fully behind them. In 1977, Stern was given a painful reminder of that when Neo-Nazis announced plans to march in his Chicago neighborhood. Stern helped organize the growing backlash against the marchers, although the Nazis marched anyway. The incident was depicted in the 1981 made-for-TV movie, “Skokie.”
Around the same time, he worked to rebut the work of a Northwestern University professor who wrote a book of Holocaust denial. Stern spoke at the school, sharing his own firsthand experiences with the tragedy.
Even when he was well into his 90s, Stern didn’t stop actively opposing Nazis. In 2017, when Neo-Nazis planned a march in his new hometown of Berkeley, California, he again helped organize a counter demonstration and spoke out against them.
Stern’s story is told in “Near Normal Man: Survival with Courage, Kindness, and Hope,” a memoir coauthored with his daughter, Charlene, and a documentary of the same name.
On coping with the loss of his family in the Holocaust:
“I didn’t make peace in me for the loss of my loved ones. I still dream. I still dream. Every night, somebody else appears.”—from a 2018 interview for the California Report podcast
Tributes to Ben Stern
Full obituary: The Washington Post
