Holocaust survivor David Ferszt displayed charm

David Ferszt was game to try anything his family wanted him to do, even if it meant wearing women's clothing.

Like the time his daughter Mania Isakson was sewing a wedding dress for herself and needed help with the hemming.

"He said, `Just put it on me and you can hem it,'" recalled Mania. "I asked him if he was sure he wanted to wear a dress, and he said, `No problem!'"

Ferszt, a small guy, easily fit into his daughter's dress, much to her delight. He hopped up onto a table, and she got the job done.

"He was that kind of guy," Mania chuckled. "No matter what I would ask him, he would do."

Ferszt died June 23 at age 84, the end of a long life that started in Poland and saw much heartache. But the Cheney man's trademark zeal to delight friends and family came easily for a man who nearly lost everything during his captivity at Auschwitz, the Nazis' largest concentration camp in World War II.

He was 21 when the German Army marched into his hometown in 1939, killing 14,000 people in 34 days. The second youngest of 10 children, Ferszt survived nearly six years in the notorious camp, in part by working in the kitchen where he could get more food than most, often bringing food back to his family.

At war's end in 1945, Ferszt learned that only he and two brothers - Eddie and Joe - survived the Holocaust.

One brother, Adash, would have lived had he not given his life to save David. On the last day of the war, the Nazis rounded up the remaining prisoners into a boat to be shipped elsewhere and killed. The British army bombed the boat, mistakenly believing it was carrying escaping Germans.

The brothers jumped overboard, but Ferszt could not swim. Adash gave him his life jacket, and Ferszt, who later awoke in a hospital bed weighing a gaunt 55 pounds, never saw him again.

After a stroke this past April, Ferszt relived that experience as if it were 1945 again.

"He was speaking in Yiddish, crying out, `I can't swim! I can't swim!'" said his second wife, Miriam, who survived the Holocaust by hiding with friends throughout the war.

"He said, `The policia! The policia! They're taking everything away from us!' I had to convince him he was safe and no one would hurt him."

That experience and others stayed with Ferszt throughout his life, but he strove to never let them overwhelm him.

Instead, his passion to please compensated for the horror and sorrow he endured.

He sought out his future wife Henia immediately after the war. She was the sister of a friend he had made in the camp who didn't survive.

Henia was the only survivor of eight siblings. She later learned that 87 family members died during the war.

"He lived for her," Mania said. "He didn't know what to do without her."

After President Truman passed the Displaced Persons Act in 1948, the Ferszts, along with little Mania, moved to Corpus Christi, Texas, where they had their second daughter, Linda. Ferszt, a businessman before the war, worked long hours in a hot furniture warehouse.

By 1952, he and Henia saved $1,800 to buy a brand-new Plymouth automobile and no longer had to walk an hour to work in the hot Texas sun.

He learned Spanish before English to get along with his Hispanic co-workers. After learning English, he was able to move into the sales profession, where he was naturally gifted.

"Once he learned the language, he was able to use his charm to accomplish just about everything," Mania said. "He had an extremely good personality, and everyone loved him."

"He was very personable," agreed Miriam. "When he walked into a room, everyone noticed and adored him."

"I think that was his surviving technique," said Mania. "Everyone wanted to do things for him simply because he was able to charm them."

But Ferszt couldn't completely escape. The number 140934 permanately etched into his forearm was rarely covered by shirt sleeves, if only to ensure that the truth of those war atrocities were known.

"He wanted people not to forget what took place," Miriam said. "History made him a survivor."

But it troubled his daughter.

"I never liked him portrayed as a victim. I didn't like him showing his arm," Mania said. "It made me sick to know what my parents went through."

When Henia died of breast cancer in 1985, Ferszt was so traumatized he barricaded himself in his home for two weeks and lost 20 pounds. He moved to Spokane in 1991 to live with Mania and her husband.

And, as per his character, he survived to live 17 more years, most of them in joy during his new life. He married Miriam in 1998.

His remaining years, fraught with heart attacks, strokes and depression, were faced head-on through vigorous exercise and whatever medical treatment was suggested to him, his family said.

"He had a real tenacity to overcome," Mania said. "It's amazing that he wanted to live so much."

Copyright 2002 Cowles Publishing Company
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