SEEING him for the first time — a gentle, dignified man whose accessible brilliance and penetrating gaze drew you closer — it was impossible to guess the unimaginable past endured by Emil Hecht.
Then Auschwitz and Mauthausan dropped from his lips.
Through the decades, he shared his agonizing narrative with all who would listen — never letting the pain stop him, or stopping with words alone.
Hecht, who died Sunday, Dec. 12, 2010, at age 86, turned tortured experience into hopeful action that transformed his community.
He contributed the first endowed chair in Judaic studies at DU’s Center for Judaic Studies with his wife Eva, securing future scholarly explorations of Jewish contributions to society.
“This magnanimous gift assured the continuity of the center’s program of exposing university students and the wider community to the significance of Jewish culture and its enrichment of Western civilization,” e-mailed Rabbi Stanley Wagner, the first holder of the Hecht chair, from Jerusalem.
An instrumental force behind CJS Holocaust Awareness Institute, Hecht firmly believed that education was a crucial antidote against another Holocaust.
Prof. Sarah Pessin, current holder of the Emil and Eva Hecht Chair, told the Intermountain Jewish News that “teaching Jewish ideas within a university context — where people come together from a wide range of cultural and religious backgrounds — was of special importance to Emil Hecht.”
“He saw first hand in his experiences with the Holocaust what can happen when people are not given the opportunity to learn about and to respect the Jewish heritage and the Jewish people.”
Hecht, who had to rebuild his life from the ground up after the Holocaust, became of the most successful businessmen in Denver.
Larry Mizel, chairman and CEO of MDC Holdings, met Hecht in 1966.
“He was working as an accountant and did a financial analysis for my first business project,” Mizel told the IJN from Hawaii.
“Over the next three or four years, we became good friends, both personally and professionally.”
In 1972, Hecht and Mizel co-founded MDC Holdings.
“Emil’s influence in my life was extensive,” Mizel said, “and not only in terms of his extraordinary business acumen.
“I spent hours and years being exposed to and educated about what happened in the Holocaust.
“Emil became one of the most public spokespersons among the survivors in Denver, reaching out to them individually and as a group through his dedication to establish a permanent foundation dealing with the Holocaust.”
Mizel said that Hecht, who inspired his own Jewish activism and often served as an informal advisor to his family, “was a very special and important person in my life. His presence and wisdom will be forever remembered, and truly missed.”
In his 2004 speech at a Holocaust Awareness Institute dinner, reprinted in the April 16, 2004 IJN, Hecht credited his solid educational foundation for helping him survive the Holocaust.
“It was my faith in the higher power we call G-d and the spirit and rule of morality instilled in me by my parents and teachers, the knowledge of what was right and what was wrong, as well as an understanding of Jewish history that kept me holding out against all odds and adversity,” he said.
“Because of this deep faith and belief, I never gave up hope in my own survival, in the survival of my people and in the eventual triumph of justice.”
Emil Hecht was born on July 6, 1924 in Svalava, Czechoslovakia, near the Carpathian Mountains, to Leopold and Rivka Hecht.
There were 10 brothers and sisters in the family. Nine survived the horror awaiting them.
By the age of eight, Hecht was in cheder, which began at 5:30 a.m. and didn’t conclude until 7 p.m.
He attended a progressive Zionist high school where he studied multiple languages and memorized the works of British and American writers by heart. Nazism soon stamped its death rattle on the Hecht family.
In 1940, his brothers were deported to a Hungarian slave labor force. They all managed to escape.
Emil, his parents and sisters were spared until 1944, when he was 19.
“In the middle of April 1944, on the last day of Passover, a Saturday, my father and I were studying the Talmud as was our custom,” he said at the 2004 HAI dinner.
“The forerunners of the German army were already in Svalava, our little town in the Carpathian Mountains.”
Jewish residents were unaware that the Jews on the Polish side of the mountains had already been killed.
“On April 15, the next day, Hungarian gendarmes came for us. My parents, my sisters and I were rounded up by gunpoint in our home.”
Like all the Jews still living in the area, the family was marched into town and herded inside a synagogue, where parents desperately tried to reassure their children while struggling to subdue their own panic.
“A feeling of utter helplessness against the menace we sensed came over all of us,” Hecht said.
The group was then ordered on a forced march to the train station.
Carrying minimal belongings, they squeezed inside the airless freight cars, were taken to Munkacs and unloaded at a brick factory actually an improvised ghetto.
Over the next few days, Jews from the surrounding villages crammed into the small yet heavily armed ghetto.
Two weeks later, more cattle cars arrived.
Many died from disease and dehydration before the train reached what the Nazis touted as the final destination of their final solution. Auschwitz.
When clarity pierced the chaos, Hecht heard people crying “Wasser! Wasser!” Water! Water!
Men were ordered into a separate line. Women and children were ordered to stand in another.
“Everything happened so fast, under such tremendous, specially induced tension,” Hecht said. “There was a terrible, terrible smell — like acrid, burning meat.
“And before I could even say a word to my father . . . my mother and sisters were already forced away from us. Like helpless, frightened cattle, without an instant or even a single word spoken to each other, we all — parents, sisters and I, along with all the other families — found ourselves forcibly separated.”
His parents and his sister Eva (Yaffa) were annihilated.
Two weeks later, he was boxed into another freight car bound for Mauthausen.
Hecht soon realized that hell has many descending dimensions.
“An SS officer said, ‘Jews! You see that over there?’” The officer pointed to a tall chimney. “‘That is the only way out of here for you. Through that chimney.’”
Hecht suddenly grasped the fate of his parents and sister at Auschwitz.
Because of his age and relatively fit physical state, Hecht was assigned to a work detail.
“I was the first Jew who came to Mauthausen who was not put to death,” he told Rabbi Hillel Goldberg in an interview in 1981.
On May 5, 1945, General Patton’s 761st African American Tank Brigade and members of the 71st Infantry liberated Mauthausen.
Hecht weighed less than 70 pounds.
Sent to a Displaced Person’s Camp in Germany, he served as a translator for the Americans due to his ability to speak the stream of Slavic languages spoken by inmates.
In 1949, Hecht married Eva Karfunkel, also a survivor. They arrived in the US on Christmas Day, 1951, and lived in Kentucky for one year. Then they moved to Denver.
“My father loved Denver because it resembled a river valley below the mountains,” said his son Jeff Hecht. “It reminded him of home.”
Years turned into decades. Hecht and Eva raised a family, doted on their grandchildren, and instilled a consciousness — and conscience — about the Holocaust throughout Denver.
Despite Hecht’s vast accomplishments, merciless nightmares plagued his memory and moral compass.
Not a day elapsed when he wasn’t haunted by the institutionalized hatred he witnessed and “wounded by the hate I experienced.”
At the 2004 HAI dinner, Hecht reminded the audience how miners would put a canary in a cage and carry it into the mineshaft. When the oxygen dropped precipitously, the canary would die.
“The Jewish people are the canary birds of history,” he said.
“One third of the entire Jewish population of the world, six million Jewish people including one-and-a-half million children, perished in the most cruel and sadistic way.
“In the end, as a result of a war that could and should have been stopped, an estimated 50 million people in all lost their lives.
“And this is why I am here tonight telling my story.”
On Monday, Dec. 13, family, friends, Holocaust survivors, colleagues and admirers gathered at a graveside service at Mt. Nebo Cemetery to lay Emil Hecht to rest.
Cantor Joel Lichterman officiated. A close friend who studied regularly with Hecht, he gave an emotional reading of one of Chaim Bialik’s poems. Son Jeff Hecht recounted his father’s astonishing personal history.
Daughter Judy Dumontet recalled a time when she checked into a hotel in Tel Aviv.
The concierge, upon seeing her name (Hecht) and her city of origin, asked whether she knew Emil Hecht.
When she said she was his daughter, the entire hotel staff came over to her to praise her father, who had stayed at the hotel recently and befriended each member of the staff.
After she got to her room, a large bouquet of flowers sent by the entire staff greeted her.
Granddaughter Gillian Hecht, 14, said that when her father Jeff told her that “my Saba had passed away, he took my hand, looked straight into my eyes and said, ‘We are the next generation of Hechts.’”
One of her fondest memories was when her grandfather took her in his lap and sang “Somewhere Over the Rainbow” from the “Wizard of Oz.”
Referencing the immortal song, Gillian said she knew that her Saba is now “way above the chimney tops. And all of his troubles are melting like lemon drops.
“And though we might be angry with him for leaving us, someday we’ll find him. Just like Dorothy said we would.”
“I look around and see the many lives Emil touched,” said his daughter-in-law Mindy Hecht, “and I know this group is only a small fraction of the people he influenced.”
Mindy spoke about her first meeting with her future in-laws.
“They had been married for over 45 years, she said of that revealing encounter with Jeffs parents.
“I grew to love Emil as I saw him still delight in watching Eva just walk across the room.”
Mindy read a brief paragraph written by her son Tristan, who is almost 11:
“I know we all have to move forward because this is what my Saba would have wanted. Everyone, remember my Saba.”
Mr. Hecht is survived by his wife Eva; children Jeff (Mindy) Hecht and Judy (Gilbert) Dumontet; grandchildren Gillian, Tristan, David, Daniel and Avital; and sisters Klara Harkavy and Rachel Spiegel. Feldman Mortuary made the arrangements.
Contributions may be made to the charity of choice.
Copyright © 2010 by the Intermountain Jewish News
