Henry Kinast remembers well the day he became a man.

Henry Kinast remembers well the day he became a man.

For many men, that memory could be a first car, a new job or a pivotal sports moment.

For Henry, it was nothing so frivolous.

He was 12 and had fallen asleep on the job and was punished severely by a supervisor in a German-run ammunition plant that served as a work camp.

It was 1942 in German-occupied Poland when Henry Kinast became a man.

He would go on to be a man who would outlast and outsmart the Nazis and the camp bosses to become a patriarch to four kids, 14 grandchildren and six great-grandchildren.

A SURVIVOR’S JOURNEY

Henry’s story is the last living story of its kind in the Mahoning Valley, and it will be showcased today by the Youngstown Area Jewish Federation.

At 3 p.m., the group will present the documentary film “Henry Kinast: A Survivor’s Journey from Ruin to Redemption” at the Jewish Community Center, 505 Gypsy Lane. Soon, it will be part of the center’s traveling exhibition.

Daughter Terri Anderson said her dad’s story is something her brother and two sisters knew when growing up, but it wasn’t often discussed. Even the neighbors in Liberty were aware of Henry’s story.

“He was always busy working. There just wasn’t time to talk,” she said. “Now, he’s telling it with a vengeance. I think he’s afraid it will be forgotten.”

Henry has not forgotten.

At PSK Steel, his Hubbard factory, on Wednesday, he watched 50 bustling workers, smiled and said “... a boy from Buchenwald.”

Buchenwald was one of Germany’s more- notorious concentration camps.

It was one of Henry’s many locations while in the hands of the Germans.

At 86, age has deprived Henry of some things. But he tells his story today like he has for years to filmmakers and others who need to be reminded of one of the world’s darkest chapters.

THE RISE OF NAZIS

Henry was born into a Jewish family in Poland on Nov. 15, 1930.

Like many European families of Jewish descent, a comfortable life on a tailor’s wages was shredded by the Nazis in 1939.

Adolf Hitler had risen to power in an economically depressed Germany before being named chancellor in 1933. He rebuilt the German military before aggressively taking on neighboring countries by annexing Austria in 1938 and invading Czechoslovakia in 1939. Germany invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939, and Great Britain and France responded, which led to World War II.

After the invasion, his parents, Pearl and Abraham, uprooted Henry and his older brother Milton from their Lodz, Poland, home.

Word was spreading about what the Germans were doing to Jews. Beatings, arrests, ghetto housing, wearing yellow stars were just the beginning. In the middle of the night, the Kinasts fled to outrun the Germans.

“We left the house; all the furniture the way it was. It was winter, and it was cold,” Henry said.

They lived in a southern Poland town for two years, only to face German threats again.

“People came to our house and claimed they were gas-chambering Jews. I remember some people couldn’t believe that something like this could happen,” he said.

Abraham gambled. He believed if they went to a nearby German-run ammunition factory work camp and volunteered the family to work, it would be safer for them and they would be able to stay together.

When they entered those gates in 1942, however, Abraham and Milton were taken one way; Henry went another.

Mother Pearl was never seen again. In the documentary film, the tale of his mother is one of the few moments when Henry cries.

Abraham’s advice to 12-year-old Henry: “Wear long pants and tell them you are 17.”

Why? Children were viewed as of little use in the factories and were killed.

On Henry’s first night of work, he fell asleep at a machine. A German supervisor pulled him aside, stripped him and beat him.

It was at that moment that he knew he had to be his own man.

Not yet a teen, he mastered machining as he built Nazi ammunition.

He found respite with German engineers, who were kinder than the soldiers. He learned to ration food. And he saw executions by bullets and hangings.

Several times, he got by on luck.

One day, he reported to the health barracks with typhus. It was sickly place, and there was no treatment. The ill just waited to die.

His dad urged him to get back to his factory job and not stay in the barracks.

Later that day, the soldiers emptied the barracks of the sick people, took them to the forest and killed them.

His childhood saw several such near-misses.

GUILE AND LUCK

For the next three years, Henry, his brother and father were moved between labor camps in Poland and Germany. They relied on guile and luck to stay among the living.

The end of the war was almost an end to life. Food got more and more scarce as the Allied forces closed in, and Nazi soldiers were in a panic to move the prisoners and themselves.

Henry says there was no food at all the last several days.

Henry’s first day of freedom was April 11, 1945, the day before President Franklin D. Roosevelt died.

“Everything was coming up like roses. The air smelled so good,” Henry said.

While safe, it was still chaotic. Abraham and Milton had been shipped to different camps near war’s end. The camps stayed their homes for months as resettlement was organized.

After a couple of months, Henry awoke in the middle of the night to what he thought was a vision of this father.

It was really his father.

Abraham had the aid of a British rabbi at his camp to send him to Buchenwald to find Henry.

It would take several weeks and more luck, but Milton, too, would find them. Abraham’s health prompted him to be sent to Sweden for treatment, and the boys would join him a couple of years later where they started their lives anew.

Henry married Inga, and the oldest of their four children, Paula, was born there.

In 1954, a Jewish resettlement program relocated the families to Pittsburgh.

Three more kids were born to Henry and Inga: Jerry, Terri and Aliza, in that order.

With their machinist skills, both brothers and friends all found work together at a metal company in Youngstown. When that plant closed in the late 1950s, Milton went back to Pittsburgh to form his own company. Henry found his own partners and formed a company that would grow to become Hubbard-based PSK Steel in 1962.

A LIFE’S WORK

His children call him a worker, a survivor, a persistent man.

“He went after whatever he wanted. All [Holocaust] survivors seem to have that trait,” Jerry said.

Henry approached fatherhood differently, however.

“As a dad, he never held the ‘survivor’ title over our heads to motivate us to do more; achieve more,” Aliza said.

“He could never do enough for us,” Terri added.

Abraham died in the 1960s; Inga died in 1984; Milton died in 2002.

Henry is now married to Giesla and spends most of his time in Florida. Terri and Jerry still live in the Valley. Aliza lives in Columbus; Paula in Florida.

One thing hasn’t changed over time for Henry.

“He’s never been bitter,” said Terri.

She said never did she hear him speak poorly about Germans or Germany. In fact, his car and his wife are German. Some of his international business has been conducted with Germans.

Deprived of the Jewish tradition of the bar mitzvah ceremony most boys celebrate at 13, Henry always told his family that when he turned 75, he’d have his in Israel.

It was on that trip that Henry experienced a rock-star like moment at the most somber of places, a Holocaust memorial.

Unbeknownst to Henry or the family, on one of the displays was a photo of Henry as a child in a camp.

“‘Papa’s on the wall! ’” is how Terri recalls the grandkids’ cries. Others heard, and a crowd soon gathered.

“There was this disbelief that here is this elderly man now, and he was the child in the photo,” Terri said. “He started talking to them. It’s a very sad place, and here was this uplifting moment for all of us.”

IN YOUNGSTOWN

Educating others is the mission of the film and today’s event at the JCC.

Retired English teacher Jesse McClain has been with the Jewish Federation for more than a year as an educational specialist. He said the commitment of the organization to teach amazes others.

“I’ve never seen a community this size become so involved in keeping a memory alive,” McClain said. “When I tell people all that we do in telling the Holocaust story, people pause: ‘In Youngstown?’”

McClain travels the Valley with a six-panel display and a video presentation. Henry’s film will join the program today.

His program, targeted for schools and organizations, can run up to 60 minutes.

A mix of Irish and a bunch of other things that are not Jewish, McClain has been a Holocaust expert for 30-plus years, but to this day, has no real recall of why it started.

“The Holocaust is bigger than a Jewish issue. It’s a human issue. It’s important to know what humans can do to each other,” said McClain.

One of his presentations was at Mathews High School. A sign outside the school advertised a Holocaust presentation that night.

With a crowd of 200 people already seated and listening, McClain halted his presentation.

“I remember saying ‘Folks – this is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity for us tonight,’” McClain said, describing the last guest to enter the auditorium.

A man driving home from dinner had seen the sign outside and stopped.

It was Henry Kinast.

For an hour, he commanded the room with his story.

MEANT TO TELL THIS STORY

Henry’s waning years have coincided with his grandchildren’s growing interest.

“I didn’t like to hear stories when I was young,” Aliza said. “I like to hear them now. My kids have an interest and that helps us all.”

“When my kids were 12, I remember looking at them, and thinking at that age, what my dad had to do to survive,” Terri said. “It’s unreal.”

Henry is the first to say luck played such a role in so many ways – in living then and celebrating still today.

In one of the concentration camps, while working a machine one day, Henry made a ring for his brother. With this ring, they would never be apart, he told Milton.

Jews were not allowed to have jewelry, and a Nazi guard took it from Milton. Wandering the camp after liberation, Henry saw the ring on the hand of a survivor. The man confessed he took it from a Nazi guard as a prize. Henry offered cigarettes for its return. When Henry reunited with Milton, the ring was returned to him.

In a Florida diner in 1988, Henry heard a man in front of him talking. Henry said to the man, “With that accent, you must be from Lodz, Poland.”

The man laughed and said, no, but his uncle was from there. Henry asked who his uncle was. The man said Abraham Kinast.

The man was Henry’s first cousin – Abraham’s sister’s son. And they stayed friends for years in Florida.

Last week on a greasy factory floor, thousands of miles and a lifetime removed from a childhood no one would wish for, Henry espoused the value of precision as he pointed to impressive machines that drive the company.

What the Germans drove into him then just to live now drives so much more for a family of 30, a workforce of 50 and an international business.

“Precision, precision,” he said.

On that same factory floor, Jerry is asked to single out an aspect or episode of his father’s life that is the most motivating. After a few seconds of pause, his answer is as precise as his dad.

“Everything.”