My name is Alexander Pollak, and I survived the Holocaust in Croatia including a one year “residence” in the Rab Concentration Camp in the Adriatic island, under control of fascist Italy when I was 8 years old. I was born 82 years ago in Bosnia, Croatia (that’s part of what used to be Yugoslavia) to Jewish parents.  Both perished during World War II.

My father was murdered in the Jasenovac Camp in 1942; he was one of close to one million people, not just Jews but also Christians and gypsies, who were killed in the most cruel ways. My mother was initially imprisoned and subsequently murdered at an unknown location in 1944.

My sister and I were saved by a noble Christian lady, Mrs. Denise Joris, who knew our family and risked her own life to save ours.  Without her heroic intervention, the whole family would have perished.  I grew up without knowing what actually happened to my parents and only discovered the truth decades after the fact.

In 1997 I visited the Jasenovac Camps.  I wore my grandfather’s tallis (that’s a prayer shawl) and spent an hour at the place where people were drowned in the River Sava or burned after horrific torture.  It was the rim of hell. After the war, with the assistance of extended family members in Romania and England, I served in the military in Israel and then studied chemical engineering in England, graduating in 1962.  I came to the U.S. in 1966, and within a few years worked in Houston to build three new petrochemical plants.  These plants still employ hundreds of people and have created income for the local community for nearly 50 years.

I’ve felt I had to work hard to achieve as much as possible, in view of what happened to my own parents and to so many others who perished. Of all the World War II events and atrocities including today’s events in Syria, parts of Africa and Asia, nothing has equaled the Jasenovac massacre. History is repeating itself; we need to act now to ensure that what happened to these children and others in the Jasenovac Concentration Camps does not continue to happen today in Syria and Africa.

In rememberance for all those who were lost, all of those who remain, and future generations who should never forget. For all of us living in the USA we must remember what Abraham Lincoln stated, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”

Of all the World War II events and atrocities including today’s events in Syria, parts of Africa and Asia, nothing but nothing has equaled the Jasenovac massacre of Our team have been helped by the people of Houston, Texas to get the documentation, photos and determination that something has to be done now by the international and Texas community at the Jasenovac sites to expose and memorialize the supreme human folly of unbelievable cruelty to those men, women and children.

History is repeating itself; we need to act now to ensure that what happened to these children and others in the Jasenovac Concentration Camps does not continue to happen today in Syria and Africa.

In rememberance for all those who were lost, all of those who remain, and future generations who should never forget.

For all of us living in the USA we must remember what Abraham Lincoln stated, “America will never be destroyed from the outside. If we falter and lose our freedom it will be because we destroyed ourselves.”