Holocaust captive, liberator reunite at event

By Bob Jackson

news@vindy.com

YOUNGSTOWN

In a world that’s become saturated with make-believe heroes, two real men of true strength and valor came face to face for the very first time in the humblest of encounters.

They walked across a room that had been set aside for this moment, each extending his right hand toward the other, and with a simple handshake, they bridged a 70-year-gap in their lives.

Henry Kinast, who endured and survived the atrocities of the Holocaust during World War II, was meeting Carmen Veccione, one of the American soldiers who liberated Kinast and other Jews from Buchenwald, one of the most notorious concentration camps used by the Nazis to imprison and exterminate Jews.

“God bless you,” Veccione said, softly patting Kinast’s arm.

Kinast, 86, was born in Lodz, Poland, and is the last living Holocaust survivor in the Mahoning Valley. His life is the subject of a documentary film that debuted Sunday afternoon at the Jewish Community Center, 505 Gypsy Lane. Titled “Henry Kinast: A Suvivor’s Journey From Ruin to Redemption,” the 15-minute film chronicles Kinast’s experiences in his own voice, as seen through his own eyes.

More than 250 people packed into the JCC’s meeting room to see the film and meet the man at its center.

But before the first frame rolled, organizers had arranged a meeting between Kinast, Veccione and James Griffith of New Castle. Veccione and Griffith were members of the 733rd Field Artillery Battalion, one of the units that freed Buchenwald. Griffith, who lives in New Castle, Pa., arrived late, so he didn’t get to take part in the intimate meeting.

Veccione, who is now 92 and lives in Boardman, was there, though, and was eager to meet the man who was but a boy when their paths first crossed in April 1945.

“The captain told me to take two men and clean that place out,” Veccione said, referring to Buchenwald. “We were going to use it as a hospital.”

The hideous smell that hit him smack in the face as he walked into the building was one thing. But what he saw next was something he’s never forgotten.

He recalled a young, Jewish prisoner taking him by the arm and leading him from room to room through the stench-filled halls. Each room was filled with bunked beds, and each bed held the emaciated body of Jews who’d been starved and abused by the Nazis, nearly to the point of death.

“It was horrible,” said Veccione, recalling that he was about 21 years old at the time. “You couldn’t imagine seeing anything like that. To see human beings treated like that, it was just horrible.”

He saw men, their eyes bulging from their faces, their skin desperately clinging to bones.

“They were like walking dead,” Veccione said. “They were skeletons.”

Kinast was born in 1930 and taken into German captivity in 1942. He said the days leading up to the liberation were even more torturous than the years before.

“There was no water. They gave us no food,” Kinast said of the Jews’ treatment at the hands of the Nazis. “We had no food for six days.”

He said the American soldiers brought food for the starving prisoners, but Veccione said what should have been life-saving sustenance ended up being fatal for some prisoners.

“Most of them were so hungry, they overate,” he said. “They ate too much, too fast, and they ended up dying.” The prisoners withering bodies were unaccustomed to processing and digesting food, so their overeating ultimately led to several fatalities.

“It was just a sad, terrible thing,” he said.

Kinast, who was in a children’s home at the time of the liberation, said he hadn’t been able to celebrate the traditional Jewish Passover in five years because of his captivity. About a week after the liberation, he and other Jews – both prisoners and American soldiers – observed Passover in a building that had been used as a theater for the Germans.

Dressed in black pants and a white-and-blue pin-striped shirt covered by a navy blue, zippered jacket, Kinast said he remembers seeing six large cars pull up outside the children’s home where he was being held at the time of the liberation.

Among those who got out of the cars and came into his building were Gens. Dwight D. Eisenhower and George Patton.

“They heard there were children in there,” Kinast said. “That’s why they came in.”

After the war, Kinast made his way to Sweden, and then to the United States, ultimately settling in Youngstown. He used the machining skills that had been forced on him by the Nazis in the concentration camp to forge a career as a machinist here, and created PSK Steel in Hubbard.

He raised a family that now includes four children, 14 grandchildren, six great-grandchildren, with a seventh great-grandchild on the way. All four of his children attended the showing of the film Sunday.

“It’s a big day for him, “ said son Jerry, 60, who lives in Liberty. “It’s very emotional.”

Youngest daughter, Aliza Levy, 48, of Columbus, said her father didn’t speak often of his Holocaust experiences when she was a child.

“Maybe three times a year, he’d talk about it,” she said. “Now, he talks about it every day.”

The depth of those experiences has grown to mean more to the family with the passage of time, as the children have grown older and better able to understand and appreciate what their father went through, Jerry said.

But in spite of all the atrocities he’s seen, oldest daughter Paula Malkoff, 65, said the most important lesson she’s taken from her father is a positive one.

“The one thing he always says is that life is beautiful,” said Malkoff, who lives in Florida. “He’s taught me that life is beautiful and to appreciate what I have.”