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Donald Egon Hoenig was the state veterinarian and state public health veterinarian in Maine for 17 years. He lives in Belfast.
During college, I had a night-time summer courier job that involved driving from Newark, New Jersey, to New Haven, Connecticut, and back every night. On those drives, I regularly tuned into Paul Harvey, the well-known 20th century radio personality with a distinctive baritone, to listen to a segment on his show called “The Rest of the Story.” Today, I want to tell my version of “the rest of the story” as it relates to an essay published by this paper in May 2023.
In that piece, I wrote about my father’s experience during World War II when he participated in the liberation of the German concentration camp known as Buchenwald in April 1945. Following the publication of the column, I received several heartwarming, complimentary phone calls and emails from folks who were touched when they read it. Many detailed their own stories — or those of their loved ones — that deeply resonated with mine.
One of the most touching was a voicemail I received the day after the column was published from a woman named Caroline Heller who lives in Northampton, Massachusetts. Caroline said a friend from Cape Elizabeth had forwarded her my column because he knew her father, Paul Heller, had been a prisoner at Buchenwald. I called her back immediately and was captivated by our conversation.
She told me that her father, having just graduated from medical school in Prague in 1939, made the difficult decision not to flee when the Nazis took over because he was afraid his medical degree wouldn’t be accepted elsewhere. As a Jew, he was soon arrested and sent to Buchenwald where he spent most of the next six years except for an eight-month period in 1943 when he was sent to Auschwitz.
The Nazis forced him to become the camp doctor to provide care to the slave laborers who were being worked to death. He was then sent back to Buchenwald until it was liberated.
It was amazing to hear Dr. Heller’s story of survival at that hellish place and Caroline and I wondered if our fathers crossed paths when my dad arrived at Buchenwald. Dr. Heller was interviewed by famed journalist Edward R. Murrow at around the time of my father’s visit and Caroline sent me an MP3 of Murrow’s account of his days at the camp. In this recording, which was broadcast back to the U.S. in the spring of 1945, Murrow related that Dr. Heller served as his guide during that visit.
Here’s the rest of the story. After speaking with Caroline, I reread my father’s letter recalling his experience at Buchenwald and came across this passage, which instantly brought goose bumps: “The other day I was at the Concentration Camp at Buchenwald. This was the same day that the members of the British Parliament were there. What sights we saw. Most of them unless seen by one’s own eyes would be unbelievable. A prisoner who had been there six years acted as a guide for us and related many of his experiences.” When I called Caroline and read her this passage, we were both stunned. There’s a good chance that our fathers met each other that day. Hard to believe.
Dr. Paul Heller, with Murrow’s help, emigrated to Cambridge, England, where he lived for a year. He subsequently came to New York City where he reunited with a young lady with whom he’d fallen in love in Prague before the war. She fled before the Nazis took over. They were married and had two children, Caroline and her older brother, Tom.
Caroline and I have yet to meet in person, but we hope to soon. My father, Egon Hoenig, passed away in 2017 at the age of 97. Dr. Paul Heller passed away in 2001 at the age of 87.
The horrors that the Nazis inflicted on the Jews are unthinkable. My serendipitous connection with Caroline — discovered only through our commitment to keeping our fathers’ legacies alive — gives me hope that these stories will persist long after the courageous survivors of these death camps are no longer with us. Never again.
