This is what Alter Wiener, survivor of the Holocaust and author of From A Name to A Number, learned to respond to at several concentration camps during the Holocaust. After being stripped of his family, friends, religion, and any personal belongings, Alter had only his name left - and Hitler managed to take that, too. "64735" was the final step it took to turn these tortured humans into subhumans, just as the Germans desired. However, From A Name to A Number is Alter Wiener's story of how he overcame "64735" and regained his identity while overcoming many struggles and hardships that he endured under Hitler during the Holocaust.
When Alter was thirteen, the Germans invaded Poland and killed his father. He could no longer attend school or practice his faith, and he had to wear an armband with the Star of David on it, indicating that he was a Jew. Every time a German passed, he was required to remove his hat and bow or he would be beaten senseless. Every human right he previously enjoyed was taken away. He watched German soldiers invade his home and deport his brother to a Slave Labor Camp, and a year later it was his turn. Over three years, he experienced five different camps where he was subjected to starvation, sickness, brutal torture, extreme temperatures and conditions, and the deaths of so many around him.
When Waldenburg was liberated by the Russians on May 9, 1945, Alter was nothing but a skeleton at 80 pounds, with no family or direction in life. Freedom was supposed to be filled with happiness, but instead it was filled with fear of the uncertain future and utter sadness remembering everything and everyone he had lost.
Poland was invaded by the Germans on September 1, 1939. Many were killed, and those who could afford it fled with their families to a safer place not under German attack. When, or if, they came back, they returned to a place unrecognizable as where they used to live.
