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DeCemBer 24- 30, 2020
Vol. 31 no. 52
Maurice Vegh dies at age 90 Holocaust survivor did not speak of his experience for years By James Bernstein jbernstein@liherald.com
In the bitter winter of 1945, then 15-year-old Maurice Vegh was among the prisoners rounded up by the Nazis and marched 400 miles, from the Auschwitz concentration camp, in Poland, to the Buchenwald camp, in Weimar, Germany. He had already spent two years loading and unloading coal at Auschwitz. Two years earlier, Vegh, his parents and his 11-year-old sister had been taken to Auschwitz. Almost immediately, mauriCe his mother and sister were killed in the gas chambers, after his mother would not give her daughter up to Nazi troops. Vegh and his father were separated, and never saw each other again. At Auschwitz, Vegh said in an interview with The Jewish Star in 2011, “Every day I woke up starving. We marched four miles to the coal mine, we worked 10 hours in the mine, and then
e
Courtesy City of Long Beach
lighting up long Beach The home at 25 December Walk was voted the all-around favorite house in Long Beach’s Holiday House Decorating Contest. A map of all of the contestants will be live on the city’s website until Jan. 1.
For the Nicholas family, a different Christmas this year By James Bernstein jbernstein@liherald.com
At the Nicholas house on East Pine Street in Long Beach, the Christmas tree is up. So are the lights and the decorations. But for this family of six, Christmas won’t be the same this year, because the coronavirus has been here. Mother, daughter and mother-in-law were all hit with Covid-19.
Amina Nicholas, 36, the mother of three girls and a boy, who works as a corrections officer at Riker’s Island, New York City’s overcrowded jail complex, was diagnosed in April. “I felt really sick for two weeks,” Nicholas said. Breathing was difficult, and she had a high fever, but was never hospitalized. She has recovered and is back at work, but attributes her illness to the rapid spread of the disease at the
jail. “A lot of people there were sick,” she said. “The inmates were sick, and we worked a lot of overtime.” Her 15-year-old daughter, Akya, a sophomore at Long Beach High School, was also sick, along with Amina’s motherin-law. They, too, have recovered. For the family, Christmas Day has always meant a big dinner, Continued on page 3
came back. Got another piece of black bread and coffee and went to bed hungry. In the morning, we got another black coffee and a piece of black bread, and we marched to the coal mine again. Week after week, until we went on the death march” to Buchenwald. D u r i n g re s t periods on the march, some were so exhausted that they sank into the deep snow, and were left there to die. At Buchenwald, Vegh was given a new job: putting dead bodies on a wagon and taking them to a crematorium. Vegh Liberation came in April 1945, when Allied troops broke through the barbed wire of the camp. “It was like looking at angels,” Vegh recalled of seeing American troops. He did not speak of the horrors of the Holocaust until he was nearly 40, his son Warren, of Long Beach, said. He began talking about his experiences
very day I woke up starving. We marched four miles to the coal mine, we worked 10 hours in the mine, and then came back.
Continued on page 3