Holocaust survivor Alex Metzger shares his story at PBSC

Palm Beach State College welcomed Holocaust survivor Alex Metzger to the Lake Worth campus Thursday, Jan. 30, to share his story of survival to students, staff and faculty.

The talk was organized by the Lake Worth campus Student Activities Department.

Metzger was born on June 17, 1940, in Belgium while his mother Rose was attempting to flee the country as the Nazis detained many.

Just a month earlier, his father was picked up on the streets never to be seen again.

Two weeks after he was born, Rose was walking with him in the street as he was crying. A Catholic lady named Marie stopped and asked why he was crying to which Rose responded, because he is hungry, and I don't have any food to feed him.

After learning they were Jewish, Marie, who was childless, offered to raise Metzger as her own so he could avoid being captured. She told Rose, who later because "Aunt Rose" to Metzger, that she could visit him anytime. Metzger was then raised Catholic by Marie and Joseph Herssens until he was six years old.

Rose eventually remarried and came back to reclaim Metzger in 1947. His stepfather was in the military and got reassigned to London where they soon moved.

"I had to learn a new language, new customs, new religion and get used to new parents," said Metzger. "Quite frankly, I didn't handle it too well."

Metzger's new family left England in 1949 and immigrated to New York City, where Metzger eventually attended the City College of New York.

In 1983, Metzger got hooked on the show "Roots," a 1977 American television miniseries based on Alex Haley's 1976 novel Roots: The Saga of an American Family, set during and after the era of enslavement in the United States.

Metzger decided to return to Brussels and explore his roots. He eventually found his birth certificate, and learned the fate of Ludwig Metzger, his biological father. Ludwig was taken to a holding camp called Breendonk and was then relocated to several other Nazi camps until his final transfer to Auschwitz in 1944, where he perished. Metzger also got to talk to one of Marie's friends in the apartment complex he stayed at until he as six as well as Joseph's brother, who both thought that he died after Marie simply said one day, we lost Alex. He also found letters his biological father wrote to his mother while at these camps which he had translated and donated to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C.

Today, Metzger resides in Florida with his wife of 55 years and has two children and four grandchildren. He is part of several Holocaust groups, including the Arizona Jewish Historical Society, and makes presentations to schools and other groups to share his history as a hidden child.