By SUZANNE M. SCHMIDT

As a Holocaust survivor, Philip Gans feels it is his duty to inform people about his life experiences.
“There are people who say it didn’t happen,” Gans said. “I go around and give talks to adults and students for the same purpose. I don’t want it to happen again. If I don’t tell the people of today’s generation what went on, they won’t know what happened.”
Gans recently visited the eighth-grade class at Corpus Christi Catholic School. He spoke to the class about his experiences from July 1942 when his family first went into hiding all the way up to April 1945 when he was liberated by American soldiers.
Annelle Tuminella is the language arts teacher at the school. The students have been learning about the Holocaust by researching and doing various group projects.
“We have been studying the Holocaust for nine weeks,” Tuminella said. “The students have been doing group projects from re-creating scenes from Holocaust novels to creating an interactive Holocaust Concentration Camp museum. The students have been incredibly creative and very detail oriented.”
Principal Carmen Caltagirone said it is important for students to learn about the Holocaust.
“It is a real enrichment experience for our children,” Caltagirone said. “We do a unit on the Holocaust every year. It is important for us to learn about it even today. I think this is such a horrible part of our history and it can never be repeated. Prejudice is a learned thing and it should not be tolerated.”
Jessa Albert is an eighth-grader in Tuminella’s class. While working on a Holocaust project with classmates, her great aunt and uncle Rose and Roger Della Motta came to visit. The Della Motta’s live next door to Gans in Clearwater and helped Jessa arrange for Gans to come to the school.
Jessa said even though she had studied the Holocaust, listening to Gans tell his story made things a lot clearer for her.
“It gives you an actual feeling of what happened,” Albert said. “I knew it had happened, but you don’t realize how bad it was until you get a personal view of it. I didn’t know people were being beaten. I learned a lot. This is something I will pass on to future generations.”
One of the messages Gans hopes to get across to students is to always stand up for what is right. Another student, Hunter Clontz, said this message will stay with him.
“I knew what happened, but I didn’t know how bad it was,” Hunter said. “From now on if I hear something or see something wrong I will speak up even if no one agrees with me. I also learned that I am never going to trust one person to lead a country.”
Gans is a survivor of Auschwitz III, a slave labor camp. Before the war, he lived with his father Levie Gans, his mother Lea Gans De Beer, his older sister Rebecca Gans, his older brother Benjamin Herman Gans and his grandmother Sarah De Beer De Vries. All lived in Amsterdam.
Levie Gans owned a successful business where they made ladies’ blouses and other items. The family was well off with a car, a summer home, a live-in maid and various other employees.
Gans said he remembers when the Nazis were coming door to door in June of 1942 to take all the Jewish people from their homes; his family was spared because it looked like a business.
“They passed us by because they saw a sign and they thought it was a business,” Gans said. “We then went into hiding in July of 1942. It was hard to find food. Food was being rationed during the war and the only way to get food was with a ration card. We had to buy food on the black market.”
After moving around to various safe houses, Gans and his family were together when the Nazis found them in July of 1943.
“I heard footsteps in the gravel outside,” Gans said. “I saw the Nazis and I jumped in the closet. My sister made me go back to bed, but then the Nazis came up stairs and made us get dressed. We were taken to the police station and interrogated. Then we were handcuffed and marched to a train station. We went from Westerbork to Auschwitz.”
The family all arrived at Auschwitz together, but were soon separated.
“We were told we were being relocated to relieve the Germans,” Gans said. “We didn’t know we were going to Germany to be gassed. When we arrived at Auschwitz, a soldier was separating us. When he got to my father he pointed to the left, when he got to my brother he pointed to the left, when he got to me he hesitated and then pointed to the left. He pointed to the right for my mother, grandmother and sister and they were taken directly to the gas chambers.”
Gans has since visited Poland and walked the same path his mother, sister and grandmother did.
“All the people who were taken to the right, were marched straight into the gas chamber and then cremated,” Gans said. “They were given a bar of soap and told they were going to take a shower. All along we thought we were coming back. Nobody ever thought we weren’t going to come back.”
Gans and his brother and father were forced to strip down and put on the clothes given to them and they also had their heads shaved. He was then tattooed with a number, 139755, and that was how he was identified from that point on. Gans was 15 years old at the time.
“It was a big shock,” Gans said. “We lost everything we had. There wasn’t just physical torture, there was mental torture, too. They did everything to make life miserable. They were brutal, they were sadists. When my brother was too weak to work due to blood poisoning, he was sent to the gas chamber. If they saw you were too skinny you were sent to the gas chamber. On my Dad’s side of the family, 20 members died in the gas chambers. My father and I are the only ones who didn’t.”
Gans said while living in the camp, he never gave up hope.
“The average weight loss was about six-and-a-half to nine pounds a week,” Gans said. “It is really a miracle anybody survived. I didn’t give up hope. If I had given up hope, I would have been lost. Many people ask me why I survived and I really don’t know.”
In January of 1945, Gans and his father were transported in open cattle cars to a camp in Flossenburg. Then in April of 1945, Gans father died while in transport to another location.
Gans was then in a death march until April 23, when a plane flying overhead released surrender pamphlets on them. The Nazis told the prisoners to walk straight ahead.
“We walked into a church where they fed us cake,” Gans said. “After 21 months of misery, we were finally free. The American soldiers were there and they gave us food too rich for our bodies. Some people died that night from dysentery.”
Because the American soldiers had freed him, Gans later decided to move to America.
“I went back to Holland and then to Aruba,” Gans said. “I then came to the states because the American soldiers saved my life.”
Gans said he has talked to almost 30,000 students and adults about his experiences. If interested in hearing him speak e-mail him at and put Holocaust in the subject line.