Holocaust survivor shares his story

Holocaust survivor and longtime Laguna Beach resident Jack Pariser will recount his harrowing tale of trials and triumph this Wednesday at the Chabad of Laguna Beach.

Pariser has been sharing his story at several Orange County high schools and Jewish centers, but he never talked about his experience for the first 30 years after liberation.

“I used to be ashamed to be a survivor,” he said. “You were proud to have survived, but you weren’t proud of your heritage.”

This attitude, he says, was typical; his own cousin went to Russia after the war, changed his name and converted from Judaism, ceasing communication with the family.

His motivation to speak about his experiences came when people began to openly deny that the Holocaust ever happened.

“I didn’t want my progeny to have to deal with such a world,” he said. “My view of the world is that there are too many fanatics.”

Since then, he’s had several speaking engagements, participated in an archival project by the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C. and filmed a short documentary, “Testimonies of Triumph,” with Chapman University film professor Jay Boylan.

Pariser, a former aerospace engineer, has owned and operated quilt shops with his wife, Leah, since 1969. Leah’s For Quilting has locations in Mission Viejo and Orange.

“Leah said she wanted her name in lights,” Pariser said. Her name is now prominently featured on the stores’ signs.

He and Leah have been married for 53 years. She handles the creative responsibilities of the quilt shop, while he’s the “left-brained, logical one” who handles its business.

Pariser attended the New Jersey Institute of Technology after arriving in the United States. Upon graduation, he received an offer from Hughes Aircraft in California. The couple packed up and never looked back.

“People here are different; it’s more free, more open,” Pariser said. He’s lived in Laguna Beach since his retirement from the engineering field.

Laguna is a far cry from the barns and cellars he and his family hid in during the war. When Germany invaded Poland in September 1939, a village policeman warned Pariser’s family that death squads were coming.

The Parisers took what they could and hid in the woods, beginning the period of being buried in dirt pits, betrayals and jail stays that will be the topic of his talk.

After the war, his family traveled to several countries before he ended up in Munich to attend Hebrew high school. He had lost five years of education during their period of hiding.

He lived with the chief of police, who had lost a son in the war. Pariser surmises that he served as a surrogate son for the man during that time.

Munich’s roofs were still blown out, Pariser recalls. Rubble was everywhere, and streetcar service had not been resumed. Food was scarce, and only available via ration cards or the black market.

The first products to become available with ration cards, he recalls, were ice cream and cakes, followed by bratwurst and beer -- the stuff of dreams for a teenager.

He earned money at the time by smuggling on the black market. It started when an American soldier gave him a 50-pound bag of dry roasted coffee, which he delivered to a deli. He continued to do so on average every two weeks until his family began their journey to America.

Pariser has been to Europe several times since crossing the Atlantic by ship. His most memorable trip was to attend a conference in Warsaw honoring the Righteous Christians, the designation for those who saved Jews during the Holocaust. The three-day conference brought together the rescuers with the Jews that they saved, often for the first time since the war.

“It was such an emotional reunion,” Pariser said. He recalls the Israeli ambassador distributing medals, a stipend and honorary Israeli citizenship to those honored at the event.

“Poland had the largest number of Righteous Christians per capita,” he recalls. In order to be recognized as one, however, the person who was helped needs to be involved in the certification process.

His father originally had regular correspondence with one of the families who hid them, but it stopped for unknown reasons.

“I had to pick up what was left over,” Pariser said. He sent a letter to the town where the families were last believed to be.

One of the four children responded, saying that his father had died, but that he was offered a Righteous Christian medal, and that he needed help getting his certification. Pariser stepped in to assist.

Later, at the conference, his wife nudged him. He looked up, and was shocked to find that “they were all there. They gave all of them medals, one by one.” They also gave a medal posthumously to their father.

He still regrets not going through the certification process for one person: the wife of one of the people who had hidden them during the war, who had demanded they be sent away. “If you really consider the situation, it was understandable,” he said.cpt.19-pariser-1-CPhotoInfoRT1R2G2120060519izftilncCHRISTOPHER WAGNER / COASTLINE PILOT(LA)Holocaust survivor Jack Pariser will share his experience at the Chabad in Laguna Beach Wednesday.cpt.19-pariser-2-BPhotoInfoBN1R37DL20060519izftj5ncSTAFF / COASTLINE PILOT(LA)Jack Pariser, a survivor of the Holocaust, will be speaking at the Chabad in Laguna Beach.