Holocaust Survivor George Rishfeld Shares His Story at MTSU

George Rishfeld was just a toddler when his parents threw him over a barbed wire fence in the Vilna ghetto, hoping strangers would catch him. He didn't understand there was a war, or that this desperate act would save his life.

On Holocaust Remembrance Day this April, Rishfeld spoke at MTSU's Ned McWherter Learning Resources Center. The Tennessee Holocaust Commission brought him to campus, where 155 students gathered to hear his remarkable survival story.

Born in Warsaw in 1939, George was too young to fight and too young for labor camps. His parents, Richard and Lucy, made an impossible pact with the Franchevitz family: raise our son if we don't survive.

The Franchevitzs hid George in their Warsaw apartment for three years, a risk that could have killed them all. When Nazi officers searched the building, young George played deadly hide and seek under beds draped with blankets.

"The people who were harboring children or adults were in as much danger as the person they were hiding," George told the audience. One officer checked the bed where he hid but never looked underneath.

Then came the reunion. George's father escaped the ghetto and appeared at the door one day, one of only two survivors.

His mother had also lived, kept alive in a factory because she looked young and could sew. When American forces liberated the camps, she found her husband on a train platform in Lithuania.

They recognized each other in disbelief and embraced. Then Lucy stepped back and slapped Richard across the face, laughing through tears: "How dare you look so good."

Why This Inspires

The Rishfeld family came to Manhattan in 1949 and started over. George faced bullying as an immigrant, but at 17 he joined the National Guard to defend his adopted country.

Today, he has two daughters and six grandchildren. He spends his time educating others about the Holocaust and fighting antisemitism.

"I believe one of the reasons I survived was so that I could go out and tell the story," George said. "So people would know that the Holocaust wasn't a Hollywood creation."

Ashley Valanzola, the MTSU faculty organizer, noted this was one of their biggest events ever, thanks entirely to student efforts. The Franchevitz family's courage and George's determination to remember show how ordinary people can perform extraordinary acts of love.

George's message is simple: the past must be remembered so the future can be protected.