Friday, Nov. 9, 2001 | 10:13 a.m.
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As a teenager Ben Lesser outsmarted the Nazis to survive three death camps -- Auschwitz, Buchenwald and finally Dachau, where he was liberated on April 29, 1945.
Lesser, who began running and hiding from the Nazis when he was 11, was captured in 1942 at 14 and was sent with a cousin, Azik Segel, to Auschwitz in Poland, where they survived the notorious "Angel of Death" Dr. Josef Mengele.
"I watched Mengele go down the line and ask people whether they wanted to ride in a truck or run five kilometers behind the truck, so I turned to Azik and said, 'Tell him you are strong and willing to do hard labor, because if we are not able-bodied they have no use for us,' " Lesser, 73, said.
"When Mengele approached, I lied by telling him I was 18 and was fit to work. He asked me if I wanted to run or ride, and I said run. Azik and I went to one side where we got to live and the others who said they wanted to ride in the truck were sent to the showers (gas chambers) and certain death."
Lesser and other death camp survivors will attend the opening of the "Liberation of Dachau" exhibit during a 10 a.m. ceremony on Veterans Day Sunday at the Lowden Veterans Center and Museum at 3333 Cambridge St.
The ceremony will include a first-time meeting of 10 to 15 Dachau survivors with the death camp's liberators.
Vietnam veteran Ed Gobel, who with his wife, Caryl, runs the museum, said the exhibit differs somewhat from other Holocaust displays, because it looks at the death camps from the veterans' viewpoint.
"What this exhibit and the other exhibit we will unveil Sunday -- the Tuskegee Airmen (black fighter pilots of World War II) -- say is that American veterans are many types of people who have helped many types of people," Gobel said.
Lesser said when American soldiers came through the gates at Dachau -- a camp near Munich -- it was "the birth of my second life. Azik and I were more afraid of an uncertain future than we were of dying."
Lesser, who today is a fit 155 pounds, weighed about 75 pounds upon his liberation. American soldiers gave Lesser and Azik a two-pound can of Spam, which they gobbled down -- their first decent meal in months. But because their body functions had begun shutting down, the boys got ill. Azik died the next day.
Azik was not the only relative Lesser lost during Adolf Hitler's reign, and his "final solution" -- the systematic killing of millions of Jews, Eastern Europeans and others. Lesser also lost his mother and father, a sister, his brother and an uncle, among others.
One of the exhibits to be unveiled Sunday is a series of four paintings by Lola Lieber, Lesser's sister who lives in New York. The works depict stark winter killing scenes, including the slayings of Lieber's and Lesser's parents, who were shot while escaping from Poland to Hungary in the bed of a coal truck.
"I've always felt there was a reason I survived while so many others died," Lesser said. "That's why I go to local schools and share my experiences with students, tell them why it is important to remember what happened and stress tolerance so this never happens again."
Although the Dachau exhibit is heart-wrenching and haunting, it is not as graphic as some other Holocaust-themed displays.
"We wanted to get the message across about the horror but not shock people," Caryl Gobel said. "The more graphic photos are smaller and are on an exhibit near a corner. We want this to be more of an educational experience."
Bill Corwin, a member of the 65th Infantry who helped liberate the Mauthausen death camp in Austria, says he plans to attend Sunday's ceremony. He said entering such facilities was like "opening the gates of hell. It was mind blowing -- something you just don't forget."
Corwin, who speaks about death camp liberations at local schools on behalf of Jewish Family Services, said he feels "a little nervous and jerky when I go to events where survivors thank us, because we were just doing our jobs. We know that in their minds they cannot thank us enough for saving their lives."
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