MTSU Sidelines

Issue date: 4/16/07 Section: News

Media Credit: Andy Harper Emanuel Tanay, left, awaited his lecture as John McDaniel, dean of the College of Liberal Arts, introduced the world renowned author and psychiatrist.

There was standing room only in the State Farm lecture hall Thursday night as Emanuel Tanay spoke about the horrors of genocide, highlighting his years as a Jew in Poland during World War II.

"We have to survive to tell the world what's going on," Tanay said, explaining that one reason it is so important for a victim to live through genocide is to bear witness to the world.

According to his introduction, Tanay has interviewed more Holocaust survivors than anyone, and was sent to Vietnam to evaluate the soldiers there.

When he discusses the Holocaust, he avoids using the word. "I don't like the term because it doesn't fit." He said that genocide paints a clearer picture of what really went on.

Tanay was born in Poland in 1928 and was there when the war broke out in 1939. He spoke about the method the Nazis used to invade, explaining that "the Germans took prisoners, put them in Polish uniforms," and had them stage an attack on Germany.

"It was genocidal to do what they were doing. They were killing men, women and children because they were Poles."

He recounted to the audience his first experience with death, when people were in the streets fleeing his village. "The roads were filled with people escaping," he said. "There were two planes overhead, and assuming they were Polish planes, the people waved, mistakenly unafraid. Machine gun fire greeted us."

The Polish Jews weren't immediately killed - they were outfitted with white armbands, much like the gold stars they initially wore in Germany. However, eventually they were placed in internment camps or slaughtered. "There were 3.5 million Jews in Poland, and most were killed."

Tanay and his family were soon placed in a ghetto, which at that time, meant an urban prison. He was barely a teenager, and he said that was the reason he was able to escape.

After his mother prodded him to find a way to get out, he climbed the wall of the ghetto. "Gunfire greets me, I go back," he said. He got back inside, climbed onto a roof and building-hopped his way to uncertain freedom.

Continued...

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