Holocaust Survivor Arnold Clevs Shares Story with Diplomats

Arnold Clevs stood before a room of foreign diplomats in Jerusalem this week and brought them back to the moment his life changed forever. "On Sunday morning, I was still a child. On Monday, I became a man," he said, recalling the day Nazi forces entered Kovno, Lithuania when he was just eight years old.

The event, organized by Zikaron Basalon and the Anti-Defamation League for Holocaust Remembrance Day, gave diplomats a rare window into the lived experience of World War II's darkest chapter. Clevs shared details that history books can't fully capture: the strafing of refugees on roads littered with bodies, the neighbor who pointed him out as "the little Jew boy," the German officer who shot his family physician dead for not removing his hat quickly enough.

His father made a split-second decision to flee the city with young Arnold, his mother, and older sister. The escape attempt failed when German forces had already arrived at their destination. The family returned to Kovno by rowboat, rowing past the bodies of slain soldiers floating in the river.

What followed were years of unimaginable hardship in ghettos and labor camps. Clevs's mother once pulled her family into a different line during a selection, a decision that saved their lives when everyone in the other group was later shot. His father hid him in a small space when soldiers came to take children away, peering through cracks as a German soldier flung a small boy onto a truck "like he was a hunk of meat."

Clevs was eventually separated from his father, who told him to remember their family in America and promised they'd reunite after the war. His father didn't survive. Of 130 Jewish Lithuanian youth who made it to the German labor camps, Clevs was among the few who lived because a 16-year-old boy had them march in formation, impressing the Germans enough to keep them alive.

Why This Inspires

At a time when Holocaust survivors are aging and their numbers dwindle, Clevs continues to share his testimony so the world won't forget. His willingness to relive painful memories serves a greater purpose: ensuring diplomats and leaders understand the human cost of hatred and the importance of preventing such atrocities. Every detail he shares honors those who couldn't tell their own stories.

His voice may waver when he recalls his neighbors' glee at Jewish degradation, but it never breaks. He survived to be a witness.