Welcome to The Moth Podcast. I'm Michelle Jolowski, a director and producer at The Moth on your

host for this episode. We're going to be sharing a very special story with you today. It's a story

about survival and resilience and one child's experience in the Holocaust. Albert Hepner told

this at a moth main stage in New Bedford, Massachusetts. Stick around after the story for an interview

with Albert, where I'll talk to him about his life after the war, what we can take away from his

experiences and so much more. Here's Albert, live at The Moth.

It's 1940. I'm five years old, lying in bed. It's a Wednesday night. The night my father and

three of his buddies are playing cards and I'm doing pretty well, sleeping, used to the noise that

they make and suddenly there's a big noise that sounds like thunder and I wake up to it and I see

my father jumping up to shut the lights and close the curtains and he's looking at

and what sounded to me like thunder was for the adults some bombing outside of Brussels, Belgium.

And my father says psychomos which means it's starting. I suppose it was the first time that I realized

something something was wrong and I felt affected by it but I really I just didn't know. I just felt

terribly affected by it. Very soon thereafter my father dies of natural causes and I'm

in first grade and two Gestapo men, they wore certain garb, that's a real nuke, Gestapo

man, barged in and the teacher asked what he want and they said they're here to take out three

Jewish children. This was the first grade. I didn't really know what it meant and but I felt a

pit in my stomach, I felt like they were talking about me somehow and they called out one name and

then I was sure I was going to be called out and I was the third name. Three of us were taken

to the principal's office by the Gestapo. Our mothers were waiting and the principal's office

and they were told to just take us out. My mother a dramatic woman just screamed all the way

going back home for about eight blocks and all I felt was rejected, nothing wanted and I didn't

...