Heritage Florida Jewish News - Central Florida's Independent Jewish Voice

"The war brought about scarcities of just about everything...except misery. 'Alle raise,' (everybody out), the German soldiers screamed as they pounded on our door with the butts of their rifles."

Thus began a 4,500-mile journey from Poland through Russia and Siberia and eventually to Uzbekistan in Central Asia, as the speaker and author's family used bribery and darkness of night to flee as the Nazis invaded Poland in 1939. 

Milton Kleinberg, who walked this long walk, will be visiting Orlando on Sunday, Nov. 6 at 7 p.m. in Nate's Shul 1701 Markham Woods Rd. in Longwood. All are welcome to come hear his amazing story first hand.

Young Mendel, from age four to 14, tells in vivid detail the wretched journey in cramped cattle cars through frigid Russia, the indignities of being in forced labor, the shame of begging for bread just to survive, and death of those closest to him. The family's plight includes abandonment, hunger, and separation (and later remarkable twists of fate and reunion) quite unlike other Holocaust stories.

Milton Kleinberg will give a personal account of how, through great sacrifices by his mother, he managed to survive the worst atrocities in human history and his uncertain days in a Polish Children's Home, scrabbling for fallen fruit, and surviving kidnapping and murder on the Black Road, and return to German Displaced Persons camps at war's end. Eventually immigrating with a lump-in-the-throat passage to America past the Statue of Liberty and into a land of opportunity tinged with bigotry yet with a promise to future generations.

In the words of Liz Feldstern of the Institute of Holocaust Education, "Bread or death adds another important voice to understanding a narrative that affected millions of people in millions of different ways. Anne Frank has become the voice of those who went into hiding. Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi are the voices of Auschwitz. Gerda Weissman Klein is the voice of the death march. Hadassah Rosensaft is the voice of the DP camps. Perhaps Milt Kleinberg will be the voice of those deported to Soviet labor camps."

To RSVP visit http://www.JewishNorthOrlando.com or call Chabad of North Orlando 407-636-5994. Tickets are $12 and there is an early bird discount of $10 if you buy your tickets before Nov. 1.