Biography of Lou Dunst tells of his three lives

My Bargain with God: The Story of Holocaust Survivor Lou Dunst, by Ben Kamin. Sunbelt Publishing, Inc., El Cajon, California, 2014.

By David Strom

SAN DIEGO — San Diegan Lou Dunst has had at least three lives. Family love gave Lou the foundation and core of who he is today. Growing up as the youngest of three children in a small village in Jasina, Czechoslovakia, in the Carpathian Mountains was an idealic time for the Dunst children. His father and mother, Mordechai and Priva, were Orthodox Jews who owned a small store that closed on Shabbat. Irving, his older brother and Lou received religious training in their small cheyder (school). They attended cheyder daily after regular school. The cheyder was a plain room often in a person’s home.  The local Rabbi and the older students drilled “the younger in the Hebrew alphabet, the Jewish calendar, the weekly Torah portion, and the commentaries of the rabbinic tradition, including Talmud and Midrash. Lou was anxious to learn. “We were very poor people, but we were anxious to learn.”

Afterwards, they returned home and did their chores working in the small family business. Along with absorbing the love of family into his awakening being, Lou learned the value of sharing. At school there were never enough books for all the students, so they shared and not enough pencils, so they shared them as well. Pupils carried firewood to keep the cheyder warm in the cold winter months. “My mother made me a large package of food everyday for lunch. I didn’t understand at first, why so much? She would explain to me that the food wasn’t only for me. It’s for those other kids who didn’t have what to eat. And she also explained to me that it wasn’t so much about the food. It was about their feelings of shame that they were poor and hungry. That’s what we did, we knew no other way.”

But this first phase of Lou’s happy childhood, this calm family-oriented world was soon to come to an end as Nazism was quickly moving across Eastern Europe. In 1939, things were changing so rapidly that Lou’s Bar Mitzvah was done on an earlier date than scheduled, when he was a few months’ shy of his thirteenth birthday. The Nazis arrived in Jasina under the grim administration of Hauptman Kruger. The Dunst children and all of the inhabitants of the town witnessed and heard the killing of innocent men women and children. Even as the soldiers ran out of bullets, the murders did not stop. The Nazis tied the wrists and ankles of those not yet killed and dumped them into the river to drown. But all did not die.

“One night, there is a knock on the door. A young lady is standing there, maybe seventeen years old.” She survived out of the river, with her hands and feet tied. They helped her clean up, gave her clothes to wear, and money to travel, possibly to other family members. Whether she survived the war Lou doesn’t know, but he remembers her name to this day. For Lou this was a miracle, one of a few he was to witness during these most horrendous times.

The chief of police, Hauptman Friedrich Wilhem Kruger, and regional director of Nazi affairs visited Lou’s parents home on several occasions. He would come Friday nights and wish them “good Shabbos” and bring along with him several of his Nazi entourage. “When we asked him once, what was his responsibility, he simply said, ‘I am in charge of the Jews in this area.’ Murdering, killing or torturing was never mentioned.  Hauptman Kruger was always polite, dressed meticulously, “and never used bad language.” Lou was sure that Kruger did not do much of the killing or torturing himself, as hundreds of the local anti-Semites were more than willing to do the work themselves.

Mordecai Dunst was taken to a labor camp and eventually returned to Jasina. A little later the decree that all Jews were to gather for relocation was issued. Suitcases were hastily packed, precious items hidden or wallowed and some parents tried to hide their children with a friendly Gentile neighbor.

Mordecai and Priva had this idea. Hide Lou. They sent him along with a cow to a friendly Christian who agreed to hide Lou. “There was enough space for me to stand up, and right away, things go through my mind…. what is the best thing and the worst thing that can happen here?” After a night or two of heavy thinking about his life and family, he thought what would be the value if he were the only person in the family to survive this nightmare? Lou left and went back to his family.

All the Jews of Jasina were eventually rounded up and taken to the Jewish cemetery where most were gunned down. Lou notes, “that most of the Jewish people in this part of the world actually were not transported to Auschwitz.” They were simply shot or “burned to death in the small synagogues of their small town.”

Those who survived were marched, beaten, spat upon as they were forced into the boxcars. Without food, water, toilet facilities, or enough air to breathe, the train slowly began to move. The doors were locked from the outside to prevent anyone from trying to escape the “over crowded cattle car.”  It was a stop and go journey, possibly to hell, picking up other boxcars loaded with Jews. The pent up prisoners wondered where they were headed? For many in the boxcars God ceased to exist. But for Lou “…even there, God was in the boxcars.”

By the time they arrived at Auschwitz, hundreds of Jews had died under the horrible conditions of the boxcars, some from lack of water or starvation, illness, suicide or from abject desperation.

Lou and his brother Irving last saw their mother alive as they entered Auschwitz. She died shortly after arriving at the death camp. Along with thousands of other Jews she was gassed and then cremated. Their father died later from lack of food and clean water, senseless beatings, slave labor, and the torturous work not even meant for animals, much less for human beings. Many suffered the same fate as Lou’s father due to the terrible conditions of the camp and the cruel treatment of the prisoners.

Many camp inmates committed suicide to escape the daily random shootings of innocent and physically-weak prisoners, or the dehumanizing torture and beatings. Lou contemplated suicide at times. In his mind, he asked his parents what he should do. They responded by saying that they could not answer this question and that he should look to God for the answer. “I prayed to Ha-Shem and was told the answer. It would be a sin to commit suicide. He told me clearly, as it would violate The Ten Commandments, ‘Thou shalt not murder.’ So of course I could not take my own life… I made stronger my commitment to live, no matter what. And I remembered again from Tehillim (The Book of Psalms), where it says, ‘Let me live, so that I may tell of the deeds of the Lord.’ To Lou it meant, let me live so that I can tell the story. “I am absolutely convinced that Ha-Shem saved me and chose me to survive so that I could tell this story to whoever will be willing to listen.” This was Lou Dunst’s bargain with God.

Lou and his brother survived Auschwitz only to be forced once again into a boxcar to another death camp, Mauthausen. Once again, they were herded into a gas chamber, expecting to die, choked to death by poisonous gas. “We were pressed together, naked, shrieking with horror, people falling on each other, some trampled, gasping for air, unable to think, function, even form some kind of prayer.” The killing machine did not work.

But as Lou asserts, “Ha-Shem (God) made another miracle.” Lou’s deep faith in God was once again affirmed.

Barely alive at the death camp Mauthausen, starving and thirsty, the emaciated inmates cried out for water or a little piece of stale bread, anything that could help them survive, but the guards only responded with contempt. “They told us not to worry; we were going to the gas chamber anyway.” The next morning the prisoners were shoved, pushed, kicked into the gas chamber. They waited for the smell of the gas, but it didn’t come. There was a malfunction in the system and the poisonous gas was not funneled through the gas lines to reach its destination so it did not work. Lou and the others miraculously got out from the gas chamber, hysterical, demoralized, relieved, confused, grateful, terrorized, but still not dead.”

Finally the doors opened and the stunned slaves rush out into the open air.  The Nazis pushed and shoved the scared and naked prisoners into the central meeting ground, where the commandant of Mauthausen casually remarked: “To burn our bodies was too expensive. Instead, he would send us to a place where we would vanish without any cost to the Third Reich.”

Lou and Irving were transferred once again, this time to Ebensee, a sub-camp of Mauthausen, where they were to work underground making pilotless VI rockets that would rain down on London. At Ebensee, one of the harshest death camps, Lou was placed on a pile of corpses; hardly breathing and with little pulse, Lou awaited death.

On May 6, 1945, American GI Robert Persinger of the Third Cavalry of General George S. Patton’s Third Army drove his tank, the Lady Luck, through the camp fence to liberate the inmates of Ebensee. Irving Dunst grabbed Persinger’s hand and tugged him over to his brother’s seemingly lifeless body on the pile of corpus and shouted: “That’s my brother. Please rescue him.”

Lou’s miraculous rescue was the beginning of the third phase in the life of Lou Dunst. Lou was slowly nursed back to health and life by many, including a stay in a Catholic hospital where the Sisters of Mercy showed respect and treated him humanely, until he was well enough to leave on his own. Lou and Irving, like so many other survivors went in search of their relatives and of any survivors they could find. They made their way back to Jasina walking, hitch-hiking or riding on army vehicle and on trains going east. They placed hand-written notes on bulletin boards in towns along the way, notifying anyone who was searching for survivors that they were alive and that they could be reached at the main European Jewish office that was trying to connect surviving relatives with one another. Most of all, they looked for any information they could find about Risi, their sister.

Lou and his brother went to Bratislava where their relatives lived before the Holocaust. Because Lou was weak from typhoid, Irving knocked on the door of the relatives’ home and Risi opened it. The two were ecstatic with joy! “Another miracle” according to Lou.

Risi was not the same. She was tormented and depressed by the demons of the recent past. In fact, she never fully recovered. Risi and her husband and two brothers decided to leave Europe and meet in Palestine (Israel) but Lou chose to meet up with them later when his health had improved.

Eventually they all met up in the United States. Lou ended up in Los Angeles with no money and no sponsor. What he had was faith in God and himself. Lou tried different places to get money to start a small peddler business, but no one was willing to give him a chance. However he eventually met an Arab businessman who lent him the money to start his small peddling business. Lou’s business prospered and he paid his friend the money he owned

Lou moved to San Diego where his small business grew. With some of the profits he wisely invested in real estate. Lou eventually became monetarily comfortable, sharing his money and success with others who benefitted from his help and guidance.

At the Jewish Community Center in San Diego, Lou met Estelle Addleson while she was playing billiards, a game she plays well. She became his wife shortly after and the two have been happily married for decades.

When Lou turned eighty, Estelle planned a surprise party for him. She was determined to find the person who led the tank into the Ebensee death camp and the person who hauled Lou off the death pile. Was Sergeant Robert Persinger even alive? If so, would his rescuer be able to be at Lou’s surprise party in San Diego? Estelle’s research paid off.

The M.C. of the party was Judge Janet Berry of Reno, Nevada. She asked Federal judge Norbert Ehrenfriend to introduce Robert Persinger.  Lou was gravely ill and touching death’s door on May 6, 1945 when he met a lanky GI. He knew of him and what he had done for him but Lou’s 80^th birthday was the first day that he was able to greet his liberator as a healthy and happy man. The two embraced with tears in their eyes. A hushed silence fell upon the 250 guests, many of them with tears in their eyes as well. As one of Lou’s friends and a guest at this wonderful event, it was a moment in my personal history that I will always remember fondly.

The event was historic enough to be “widely covered in the media.” Four local TV stations had a section on this event on there TV programs that evening, the San Diego Union Tribune had an article, as well as the Los Angeles Times.

Estelle Dunst claims that Lou “is a unique man. He has taken this tragedy and turned it around to a benefit.” Wherever and whenever he is asked to speak, Lou reaches many of the hearts of his listeners, a major benefit to all. Lou gives talks two or three times a week to young or old people with his main message:  We are all children of God and we must love one another, even the strangers among us. We are all bothers and sisters and must be “our brothers/sisters keepers.”

As well as killing the human body, the Nazis had tried to kill the spirits of the living as well. Lou Dunst is living proof that the spirit cannot be killed.Lou’s faith sustained him through horrendous adversity and many brushes with death so that he could tell his story, which is the story of all the victims and survivors of the Holocaust. Lou recalls the words of the Ethics of the Fathers: “In a place where there are no human beings, you be a human being.” Lou Dunst is an amazing gift to the world, and the world is a better place, a place of hope and faith, because he survived to tell us his human story. We are all so fortunate that Lou made his bargain with God.

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Strom is professor emeritus of education at San Diego State University.  He may be contacted at david.strom@sdjewishworld.com  Ben Kamin’s biography of Lou Dunst is scheduled for publication in January.