Eighty years after diabolical German leader Adolf Hitler went on a reign of terror, killing millions of Jewish men, women, and children, the stories of pain, horror, loss, and tragedy continue to reverberate. Victims like Jochen "Jack" Wurfl continue educate today's generations about what unfolded, with his new book, "My Two Lives" releasing just weeks before Hamas' deadly Oct. 7 terror attack on Israel.
Wurfl opened up in an interview with CBN News about the traumatic events he experienced during World War II as his mother, who was Jewish, and father, a Catholic, both lost their lives during the Holocaust. Wurfl and his brother, Peter, were sent away in an effort to keep them safe. Another factor allowing the children to blend in and escape Hitler's wrath was their mixed background.
"My parents decided very wisely to have us baptized Catholic, and that helped us all along because every time someone asked us, or we had to complete some papers or something, instead of saying 'Jewish,' we could say, 'Catholic,'" he said. "So, that was a big help at that time." Wurfl started school in Berlin when he was just 6 years old, recalling how he and the other students had to go into the backyard of the school and learn how to march and sing Hitler's praises — something they wanted no part of but were forced to do.
"We had to learn how to march and how to say, 'Hail, Hitler!'" he said, "When we were a couple years older than that, we were actually beginning to be taught by the Hitler Youth ... to use certain weapons such as bazookas and grenades and that type of thing. We were just kids." Wurfl said he and his brother were young but knew they were hiding out under the guise of their Catholic identity. They also knew the costs were quite high.
Wurfl and his family soon faced the unthinkable, as his father was arrested and sent to a concentration camp. Eventually, his mother, too, faced the same fate; both died. The story is particularly pertinent as the Israel-Hamas war continues to rage and anti-Semitism grows. "It's very disturbing," he said of Hamas' violence and rising anti-Jewish sentiment. "It was very, very surprising how they went about it in such cruelty." Listen to his story.
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Welcome to "The Newsmakers Podcast," a show where we go behind the headlines each day to bring you interviews with pastors, entertainers, politicians, and other notable figures. Based on the "Newsmakers" show on the CBN News Channel, this daily podcast featuring CBN's Billy Hallowell provides full interviews with one newsworthy person every weekday.
and this is a show where we go behind the headlines every day to bring you an interview with a pastor, entertainer, politician, or other notable news figure. And this is a show, again, it's daily, but it's based on our weekly TV show, which is also called Newsmakers. You can watch it on the CBN News channel and also on our YouTube page. And on this show, every day we dive deep. It's a little more longer form with one of the people who you will often see on our Newsmakers show or across the CBN News platforms. On today's Newsmakers, we sit down with a Holocaust survivor who is joining us to share his story. He talks about how Hitler impacted his family and he responds to Hamas's cruelty against Israel. His name is Jochen Whirlpool. With no further ado, let's welcome him to the show. I wanted to start with World War II and sort of your early memories of what it was like once the war broke out. Well, I remember back to my age four and I lived with my parents in Austria. And my father worked for Mr. Shoshink, the president of Austria. And he knew pretty well that it looked like Hitler was going to come into Austria and do his own shows in make Austria part of Germany. So he decided, my parents decided, that at that point it would be safer for me to be in Berlin where my grandparents lived than to stay in Austria. So they sent me to Berlin and I was beginning to know a little bit as to what was going on in Berlin with the Nazis and so on through all of my relatives and my grandparents and so on who I talked to. And as you were learning those details, I mean, you were such a young child trying to understand and comprehend, I imagine as you were starting to get a little older there, you were maybe recognizing seeing the impact that this was having on other Jewish neighbors, people around and just for context, so people understand your father was Roman Catholic, your mother was Jewish, correct? So I would imagine there was some fear in that. Yes, my father was thrown out of the Catholic church at that point because he married a Jewish woman and when we got to Berlin, my parents decided very wisely to have his baptized Catholic and that helped us all along because every time someone asked us or we had to complete some papers or something, instead of saying Jewish, we could say Catholic. So that was a big help at that time. Yeah, when I was about six years old, I started school in Berlin first grade and at that point already after school was out, after our classes were out for the day, we had to go out in the backyard of the school and learn how to march. We were six years old, our boys, we had to learn how to march and how to say "Hyl Hitler" and the proceedings and so on. A little later, when we were a couple of years older than that, we were actually beginning to be taught by the Hitler youth and I get back to that in a minute, but we were already being taught to use certain weapons such as the usual person, hand grenades and that type of thing, we were just kids. Can I ask you about that because you know, you're young kids at this point, this started when you were six, you're going to school, you're starting to learn, you know, saying "Hyl Hitler" and all these other things. How aware were you as a young child, you know, your parents had sent you to Berlin, they're trying to protect you. Were you aware of what was going on? Did you understand that you were sort of living undercover and hiding your Jewish identity? Just take us through a little bit of what was going through your young mind at that time. Yes, my brother and I, my brother Peter is a year and a half older than I, yes, we do. We knew what was going on because we knew it from my parents, from my grandparents and we also realized that people were disappearing, our neighbors were all of a sudden gone, friends were all of a sudden gone, so we asked and we were told what was going on. So we had a pretty good idea as children, as was going on, Peter and I. And certainly when we had to use the Hitler used, we didn't want to be part of Hitler, we knew that already, but we had to do it in order to survive, you know. And you were able to fly under the radar on that because you were able to say that you were Roman Catholic, you know, you were able to do that. Where were your parents at this point, as you were going through, you know, the education, the Hitler youth, they're training you to use weapons to, you know, where were they at that point in time when that started? Yeah, my father was arrested when Hitler walked into Austria. He and Church Nick, he was sent by the same train to a concentration camp called Saxon Ausen, that's very much north, right at Berlin, back at the north of Berlin. And my mother, in order to get away from all of that, had gone to Czechoslovakia. And she lived in Prague. And so you were separated from your parents, and I know that both your dad was arrested at what point was your mom also taken to a concentration camp? Because at some point, both of them ended up taking, correct? Yes. Yeah. My mother was taking a little later. I guess we were about 10 years old when one day we were on a delivery mission of some papers in envelope. At my mother and father, they somehow corresponded, were able to do that through a SS policeman. And we were on a mission to deliver these papers. And as we were coming back in the subway back near our house, it's right around the corner. As we came out the corner to my sister, my mother, where we lived at that time, we saw several SS and Gestapo cars in front of our house, in front of the building. We went there. So what to do? We decided we were going to wait there on the corner and not go and show ourselves until because we had an envelope that we were bringing back from our mission. And we thought we'd wait until the Gestapo and SS would be gone. And then we could ask our mother, well, to our surprise, it was our mother who was finally taken out of the building, put into one of the Gestapo cars and was arrested and went to jail. And then from there, she was eventually sent to a concentration camp where she lost her life, correct? Yes, we, my brother and I, we spent two or three days to find out which prison the Nazis put by mother. And we went to the prison. We went into the prison. The gods didn't pay much attention to us because I guess we were so young. And we saw our mother and we figured out what cell she was in. And we finally got to see her and got to talk to her very, very briefly. She simply told us, be good boys, be good at school, learn. That's the most important thing. Pay attention to what you're doing in school. I love you. I know you love me, but you go now because if you don't go, if you stay here with me, then you're going to be arrested too. So we tried to leave and then we were actually caught by one of the policemen there, one of the SS, and we tore ourselves away from him and ran out of the prison and into the streets. They were following us for a while, but on the streets, at our age, we could run much faster than they could be just disappeared, you know. Wow. Was that the last time that you were ever able to speak to your mom? That was the last time I saw my mother, yes. From there, she was taken to Auschwitz. I have so many other questions about the details, and I know these things are not easy to talk about, and I appreciate you taking us through that. And I want to get to those other questions, but how were you not? And maybe you were. You know, we're going to talk about your book, My Two Lives as well in a moment. How were you able to not be overtaken with hatred and anger as these events were unfolding as your life was being dismantled, your parents taken away from you, inevitably losing them? How did you not allow hatred and anger to overtake your heart and your mind? Well, it wasn't easy, it was very, very difficult, my brother and I talked about it all the time. We were very close to two of us, and we decided we knew what we had to do in order to live, to get on with our life, if we would in any way let them know that we were half Jewish. And if your mother is Jewish, she will consider the Jew. So we just managed to keep our heads and said we're going to live, we're going to try as long as we can to play along with the Nazis, you know, and that's what we did. And then my grandfather knew of a place of a summer camp in northern Germany, on the north sea, or 200 miles north of Berlin, and he made arrangements for us to be sent to this summer camp for a couple of months or three months to get away from Berlin, because things were getting harder and harder in Berlin. So he sent us there when we were six years old. And this was right after I had started school in Berlin, and he sent us there for the summer. The camp was run by a beautiful, wonderful woman by the name of Irma, France and Heinrich Store, we called her Tuntel Irma, and she ran this home with the help of her daughter. And we lived there, she knew who we were. My grandfather talked to her, he knew her from past experiences somehow, and she knew that we were Jewish, so she kept us in spite of having her own children, so she was all also very much in danger there. But we stayed there, and instead of a few months, it ended up that we stayed there until I was 17 years old. Wow. And how old were you when your mom was taken again, because I know the timeline, there's so many events that happened here. When my mom was what? When your mom was arrested, how old were you? When my mom was arrested, I was about 10, 11 years old. Wow. So you stayed though at that camp until you were much older, and you were able to be protected there. You and your brother were never arrested because of the kindness of these individuals who risked their own lives to help you, correct? Exactly. Exactly. But on top of that, we had another person who saved us, and that was our teacher. And our teacher was in the SS. He taught us in the mornings, and at one o'clock, when the school was over, he gathered to his black uniform, gathered his motorcycle, and drove off every day, to his SS meetings, and what word was, and for what we never do, we never do. But he was a wonderful teacher, he taught us well. And even though he preached, of course, all the Hitler philosophy, and what we were supposed to do as Hitler used, every morning we would go into school, we would have to sing songs about the danger of the Jews, and they'd stay away from the Jews, and so on. And we had to sit there, and we actually sang the songs along with all the other children to stay alive. I mean, that is unimaginable. It's horrific. And you look at what's happening right now again, you know, in our world, antisemitism never goes away. Right now, it feels like it's rearing, it's ugly head, and becoming more intense. And I think back to everything you're describing, having gone through and survived, before we talk about the book and some of the current events that are going on, your mother, we know that she died in the concentration camp. What happened to your father? Her father stayed at the concentration camp in Berlin, where they originally took him. They took him there. A matter of fact, he escaped twice from there, and when we were at the summer camp, he came to see us with my mother. This was before my mother was taken to Auschwitz, and we saw them very briefly there for two times. Wow. Wow. You chose to write this book, and it's an incredible story that you're telling us. But even so many other details in my two lives, you know, this is a very personal story to share, to do interviews on, and then to write a book about what led you to want to write the book? Yeah, that's a good question, because people had always asked me friends and other people that I know over the years, "I should write a book," because they thought my life was a little different than theirs, and I always refused to do it, and I always used to tell them there were thousands of other people who were in the same circumstances or similar circumstances during that time, and I would, just the children, if one of them would write the book, that they would be better writer than I would be. Well, this went on for years and years and years, and then all of a sudden, two and a half years ago, yeah, two and a half years ago, my sister, my daughter, Dana, Dana Carol at her husband, Tom, one day, sat me down and said, "Dad, we need to talk to you about something, you got to write a book, and we want you to write a book so that our family, our grandchildren, our children, our great-grandchildren," and so on, that the family would always know what happened to us, how did our family come to America, who were we, what happened to our relatives, and so on. So write this book for the family, and that's what I wrote the book for, I wrote it for the family, and then all of a sudden, through the publishers or somewhere, it got out, other people got it, and it became quite a popular book allowed here, a lot of people are reading it. Well, it's coming at a time when, look at what Hamas did on October 7th, and what has followed since then, what went through your mind and your heart when you heard the details of what happened in Israel on October 7th? Well, it was one of the worst things I've ever heard of, it was terrible, you know. I think it was, what, 1,700 Jews were killed, and the way they were killed, children in front of parents and parents in front of children, and it was absolutely terrible, and this whole business of antisemitism, which is so much increasing presently, not only here in this country but all over the world, it's been a disturbing, you know, a disturbing to us, of course, and I just hope that somehow, how does this ever going to be resolved? I have no idea, how these people over there can live in peace and give up, no one will give up that country, certainly the Jews, this is the first time in their entire history that they owned a piece of land, that they owned their own country, and we're very proud of that, and I think the Israelis have done tremendous well in their little piece of land over there, and when this happened with Hamas, it was very, very surprising, how they went about it, in such cruelty, and so on, but how does this ever going to end? I have no idea. I mean, your war is going to come to an end someday, we know that, but what happens to either fight about their land and so on, and I certainly hope that the Israelis will never give up any of their land, that they were stranded, they need still land now, you know, in 1948, the United Nations voted that this shall be Israel, and most of the people who came to Israel at that time were people who have been in concentration camps and suffered during that period of time, and I'm very proud of those people what they did. Well, absolutely, and, you know, I want to ask you before we go here, I mean, there's so many other details of your story, I could talk to you for hours, because it's so important to hear your story in light of what we're watching happen right now, the fact that people forget history, they forget the things that people have gone through what you've described losing your parents, I mean, it's just, I want to read you this statistic, I don't know if you saw this, but there was a recent poll that came out, and I found it so alarming, I didn't even believe it was true, but the statistics that came out of this poll, 20% of young people in America between the ages of 18 and 29, so young people in this country, 20% of them believe that the Holocaust was a myth. I mean, two out of 10 young people say that the Holocaust was a myth, and then another 30% of them, so now we're talking about half of these young people, they couldn't either agree or disagree with the statement that the Holocaust was a myth, they weren't sure. What, as somebody who just told us this story and went through this unimaginable situation, why do you think young people are saying that sort of thing? Well, that's a bit secret to me too, and I'm so surprised that they don't know what happened during the Holocaust, in that they were not taught more in school, reading in books, I mean, this has been talked about, it well-publicized all of those years. You know, one of the reasons that I wasn't against publicizing my book is to reach young people in this country, let it be sold, let it go around as much as it wanted, I hope that young people will read the book and maybe learn something from it. You know, if just 5, 10 people who would understand it, they would learn from that book, it would be worth it to me, you know, and that's really, I had read it for my family only and now it's become more public and more people are reading it, and in a way I'm glad of it, I didn't initially certainly claim that at all, and this was also prior to Israel and Hamas, you know, the timing was unbelievable, my book came out, was published today, and Hamas and Israel started at the same time, so I had no idea when I wrote the book, but this was going to happen. Well, and I want people to grab the book, it's called My Two Lives, and it's really fascinating because you talk in the book about living in Europe at one point in your life and then immigrating to America, you're a successful businessman, you've, I mean, you have such an incredible story, you overcame all of these horrible things that happened to you and your family, and now you're sharing this at a time when people, as you were saying, especially young people, need to hear this more than ever. Any final words that you want to leave people with today? Well, I just hope somehow that they learn that they understand that eventually how this is going to happen, I'm not sure, but why don't you understand that the Jewish people are very normal people, they're very industrial people, they're very hardworking people, in many cases they're extremely successful, and I think they're helping their country, they are good for the country, they're good for all the people, they're millions of employees by who are people that are employed due to the success of so many Jewish businesses that we see now a day, you know, and why I, you know, since I was five years old, I have asked myself, what is antisemitism? I know what the word means, the word antisemitism, but I don't know what antisemitism really is, where does all of this come from, what are the Jews doing, they have never started to war as far as I'm concerned, they never really hurt anyone, they were fairly successful, I think they add to both countries that they lived in, they didn't do any harm to anyone, so yes, antisemitism to me is a big puzzle, it still is. Well it's a very, it's another conversation, you know, but I think it's a very spiritual issue that transcends, it doesn't, it doesn't make any sense, right, there's something else going on there that is so hard to comprehend because it's such an irrational abnormal behavior for people to have against a group of people. Exactly, exactly, and look what's happening in the universities today. Now this is really positive to me, this is really, and with some of the leaders of these schools who are asking Congress what to do about it, they don't know what to do about it, it was really not willing to do anything about it. Yeah, and in any other context they would, if it were any other group of people it would be dealt with, right, and I think that is where this is even more disturbing is that it's so normalized or overlooked that they were able to give those responses in Congress, but fortunately people reacted to that very negatively, thankfully, you know, and did what is going on here, and we need to ask that question. Students were afraid to go to classes, you know, it's terrible. Well I am hopeful that people pick up the book My Two Lives, read your story, understand it, and walk away with the lessons they need to better comprehend what is happening. I really appreciate you joining us today. Well thank you for having me, you know, for letting me talk about this because it's really in my interest, I lost my entire family, you know, my mother's father, my grandfather's, my uncle's, my aunt, had no one left except my brother and myself after the Holocaust was over you. It's unimaginable, it's unimaginable, and the book again is My Two Lives. That's all for today's Newsmakers podcast, be sure to tune in for the next episode of the show, and also head over to the CBN News YouTube channel and the CBN News channel to watch Newsmakers every week. We'll see you soon. [Music] [Music]
