Spring Break
Holocaust victim shares stories of concentration camp, escape
Scott Callahan
Issue date: 3/3/09 Section: News
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It took her a minute, but she suddenly realized that the worn shoes exemplified what saved her father Andre Mark's life during the Holocaust -- soccer.
"Soccer saved his life," Mark-Piser said of Mark, the grandfather of CSU student Alexa Piser.
As the unlikely Jewish survivor of the genocide that claimed so many of his people's lives, Mark's story spans nearly two years of barely avoiding death by execution and starvation in four concentration camps and finally ended in a miraculous escape.
Living in a culture of hopelessness and misery in four different concentration camps, Mark's first hope for survival came one day when a Nazi officer asked for inmates who played soccer. Mark stepped forward, telling the officer he had been standout in high school.
The officer had Mark transported to another barrack at the concentration camp in Auschwitz, Poland, where he and others played soccer all day as two teams of 11 inmates.
What he later learned was that the Germans used the soccer team and the image of the comparatively healthy prisoners to disguise the massive death rate in the camp from Allied Forces planes that flew overhead.
As a member of the team, Mark was given water and enough food to sustain his energy to play --Â a privilege that was reserved for athletes in the camp. But the cleats Mark-Piser found in her garage were not part of that privilege --Â the prisoners were forced to play barefoot.
Mark, labeled as prisoner No. 59,527, was forced to labor every day, but couldn't bring himself to detail it to the Collegian.
"I won't even describe it to you; you wouldn't believe me even if I told you," Mark said.
One day a Polish officer warned that the teams would be killed and replaced because they were too fit and could escape to tell the world about the camps and send for help.
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