Holocaust survivor Charles Middleberg of Marlton recently spoke to the sixth, seventh and eighth grade classes of Our Lady of Mount Carmel Regional School in Berlin.
Middleberg was raised in Paris, France. By 1942 his father was involved in the war, leaving behind Charles, his brother Victor and his mother Bertha. When the German army raided the city, removing Jewish men, women and children, Middleberg’s family hid by lying on the roof of their apartment building, accessed by a trap door.
Bertha later sent Charles and Victor with strangers to a farm in the country, where they stayed for a short period of time before returning to Paris in search of their mother. There they lived with a family acquaintance until the end of World War II.
While Charles and Victor later were reunited with their father, who spent time at the Auschwitz concentration camp, they never saw their mother again. Charles later learned that his mother had been among the victims that were sent to the gas chamber in Auschwitz and his father was spared because he was a watch maker that the Nazi’s used to harvest gold and other materials from holocaust victims.