Mequon resident Walter W. Peltz loved his collection of Shabbat candlesticks. But unlike most collectors, he was happy to see it dwindle from its peak of more than 120 pairs to less than 30.
Why? Because over the years, he gave them away to young Jewish couples to enable them to celebrate Shabbat.
“As a young boy, he always wanted brass candlesticks,” said his daughter, Suzy Farkas, “because his mother lit the lights of Shabbat in tin cans. And although years later he prospered, he was never ashamed of the poverty of his youth in Poland.”
But poverty wasn’t the only hardship he had endured. Peltz, who died Nov. 21 at the Jewish Home and Care Center at the age of 84, was likely Milwaukee’s best-known Holocaust survivor.
While he made his living first as a tailor and then as the owner of Midwest Iron & Metal Co., a scrap metal business he started in 1967, Peltz made a third career as a Holocaust educator. He taught hundreds, maybe thousands of middle school, high school and college students about his experiences in World War II concentration camps.
Born in Warsaw, at the age of 20 he had joined the freedom fighters, but was captured in 1939. He was imprisoned in five different camps, including Auschwitz and Dachau, where he met his future wife Rose, a Hungarian prisoner. He was the only member of his family to survive the Holocaust.
After the war, he and his wife lived in Germany for four years before coming to Milwaukee. She died in 1968, and he married the former Arleen Arnstein in 1972. They worked together in his business and she encouraged him to become a Holocaust speaker.
His first talk was at the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee. He confessed he felt inadequate because of his lack of education, but many universities, Milwaukee public schools, church groups and other organizations soon heard about his presentations and invited him to speak. He spoke to some 100 schools a semester, often one in the morning and another in the afternoon.
Al Simon — 19 years Peltz’s junior but a friend for nearly 50 years — said in a eulogy, “I made the Holocaust a subject of personal study. Of all the books that I read, documentary films I viewed, and movies I watched, nothing was more instructive and revealing than the stories Walter would share about his youth and his experiences in the concentration camps.”
When Peltz spoke to Simon’s religious school classes at Congregation Sinai in the 1970s, he “turned words in a history book into living events,” said Simon. “He turned black print on white paper into Technicolor scenes that etched themselves indelibly upon the mind and the soul of the listener.”
Unlike Simon, Jean Messer met Peltz only once, nine years ago when she was an eighth grader at Glen Hills Middle School. “He spoke to my social studies class and is still the only survivor I’ve ever met. But he made a lasting impression on me.
“I guess I was at an age when I was finding out more about life and history and he made his Holocaust experiences tangible. I still remember seeing the numbers on his arm, which added to the reality of his words.”
“He fought against prejudice of all groups — blacks, gypsies, women, homosexuals, and of course Jews,” said Barbara Lawrence, Messer’s teacher at Glen Hills who arranged for Peltz to speak to her classes for nearly 30 years.
His oral history was recorded by Steven Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation.
A longtime member of Beth El Ner Tamid Synagogue and its Men’s Club, he was also an associate member of several other synagogues. He also belonged to the Morris R. Guten Post of the Jewish War Veterans of the USA.
He served as a board member of Jewish National Fund and past president of the New American Club; and was a founder of the Concerned Jewish Citizens to Fight Neo-Nazism in Milwaukee. He also served on the board of local Yom HaShoah observances.
He volunteered at the Veterans Hospital and raised money as well as awareness for Israel and the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum. He also had belonged to the Wisconsin Institute of Recycling Industries.
In addition to his wife and daughter, two grandchildren and two great-grandchildren survive.
Rabbi Benzion Twerski officiated at the funeral on Nov. 23. Burial was in Beth Hamedrosh Hagodel Cemetery.
The family would appreciate memorials to the Jewish Home and Care Center or the Guten Auxiliary Scholarship Fund.
MORE STORIES
Loading ...