Holocaust survivor from Longboat Key to speak Wednesday in Bradenton

MANATEE — Longboat Key resident Thomas Otto Hecht, now 86, vividly remembers March 15, 1939 when the German army marched into his town of Bratislava in the former Czechoslovakia and imposed the same anti-Jewish laws that they had enacted in Germany.

“I was kicked out of school because I was Jewish and they took my father’s business away,” Hecht recalled Tuesday. “We had to flee.”

Hecht will relive his memories in Bradenton on Wednesday during a speech entitled, “Genocide and the Holocaust.”

Hecht will speak at 5:30 p.m. at The Al Katz Center, 5710 Cortez Road, in the Cortez Commons Shopping Center.

Although the 10-year-old Hecht and his family avoided Nazi concentration camps, the family was on the run for years, said Beverly Newman, Director of the Al Katz Center.

“There were many families in the Holocaust whose lives were spared by fleeing, but it was a horrible life because the Nazis were always on their trail.” Newman said.

Hecht’s speech, special materials that go with it and food provided by the center account for a $12 admission fee, Newman said.

Hecht will talk about genocide, which is the systematic annihilation of an ethnic, racial, religious or national group.

Hecht’s family first fled to Hungary on Sept. 15, 1939 where the family split up with Hecht’s father going to Paris, France. The family reunited in Paris but fled Paris on June 13, 1940, a day before the start of the German occupation, Hecht said.

“We spent the next two months on the road,” said Hecht.

The family was denied entry into the United States but finally settled in Canada where young Hecht grew up.

Hecht has published a memoir about his experiences called, “Czech Mate: A Life in Progress.” 

“There are various genocides,” Hecht said. “There was Armenia in 1915, Rwanda in 1990, Bosnia in 1995 and Darfur in 2003,” Hecht said. “But those were all local killings of specific people. But the Holocaust in 1933 was international. The Germans had a Final Solution and that is the difference between the Holocaust and the other genocides.”

The Al Katz Center was founded in 2012 and its mission is to advocate for elders, including Holocaust survivors, and to present concerts, Jewish art shows, Holocaust awareness and other programs that encourage tolerance for all people, Newman said.

Richard Dymond, Herald reporter, can be reached at 941-745-7072 or contact him via Twitter@RichardDymond.

This story was originally published April 4, 2016 at 11:01 PM with the headline "Holocaust survivor from Longboat Key to speak Wednesday in Bradenton ."