Holocaust survivors often appear to fall into two groups — those who never want to speak about or remember their experiences, and those who yearn to tell about them.
Robert Matzner, 82, of Sheboygan is in the second group. In fact, he told The Chronicle in a telephone interview last week that even during his ordeal he thought about telling his story.
“When I was in the camps, I told myself that I need to live through this and if I get out I will write and tell,” he said. “That’s what kept me going.”
But it took him a while to do it. Eventually he did start writing and typing notes “for myself and my [three] children only,” but “I never thought it would be a book.”
Then, according to his son Murray Matzner of Gloucester, Mass., he met motivational speaker Larry Vogel when Vogel was part of a non-Jewish group visiting Sheboygan’s Congregation Beth El, in which Matzner is active. (In fact, he is the current president of the shul.)
When Vogel learned that Matzner was a survivor, he began urging him to create a book of his memories and offered to help.
The result is “Prisoner 19053” (trade paperback, 108 pages, $18.95), recently published by the Sheboygan County Historical Research Center.
The process of creating the book began “two or three years” ago, Matzner said. While “everything [in the book] is my own composition,” Matzner , who doesn’t own a computer, admitted, “I don’t know much about spelling” in English.
So he and Vogel met about “three hours a week” at Vogel’s house and together used Vogel’s computer to compose the book.
One distinctive thing about this book is that it contains some photographs of Matzner as a child in Poland and of some of his family members who were murdered. He explained that shortly before the war, some members of his father’s family managed to leave Poland for Argentina and had brought these photographs with them.
“When I was liberated, they sent them back to me,” Matzner said. “They knew I had lost everything as far as family pictures went.”
After liberation, Matzner married Lucia (now Lucille) Argiewicz, another survivor from the same Polish town, and in 1950 they moved to Sheboygan.
He worked in a plastics factory for 32 years and Lucille operated a dress shop. Their oldest child, Richard, now lives in Los Angeles, while their youngest, daughter Jo Matzner, lives with her husband in Madison.
Upon completion of the book, Matzner offered it to the research center and declined to take any financial gain from it. “I let them do the publishing and they are selling it [and] getting all the profits from the book,” he said.
In his introduction to the book, son Murray said he remembered his parents waking from nightmares about their experiences.
Nevertheless, Matzner said he has done some speaking about his experiences to nursing homes and schools in the Sheboygan area, but has had no interest in traveling beyond that.
He is struggling with his health and has “has a few heart failures already.” But he said that he may try to contact the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, D.C., and Israel’s Yad Vashem Holocaust Memorial Museum in Jerusalem about his book.
“I feel very gratified that I finally got to it,” he said. “I didn’t think I would be able at my age to put it together.”
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