Teacher Shares Holocaust Survivor's Message 200+ Times

When Abe Piasek died in 2020 at age 91, he had one final request for his friend Steve Goldberg: keep telling my story. Since that day, Goldberg has shared Piasek's remarkable journey over 200 times through his initiative "My Friend Abe."

More than 30 Duke students gathered in April to hear Goldberg recount how his friend survived the unthinkable. Piasek endured six concentration camps, lost his entire family, and wore the same clothes for two years in a slave labor camp.

At just 13 years old, Piasek was separated from his family and sent to Radom labor camp in Poland. He never saw them again. He survived Auschwitz's selection process only because two friends lifted him to make him appear taller and stronger for work assignments.

At Vaihingen, guards would machine gun anyone who dropped their concrete bags. Piasek recalled stepping around bodies left intentionally as warnings. He survived four more camps before U.S. forces finally liberated him at Dachau.

After two years in displaced persons camps, Piasek boarded a boat to America in 1947. A photo he kept and framed shows the Statue of Liberty with the words: "August 3, 1947, freedom for me."

Goldberg, a Triangle area history teacher and Duke alum, met Piasek in 2018 when the survivor spoke to his high school class. They became fast friends, and Piasek even traveled with Goldberg's students to the Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington.

Why This Inspires

Those who knew Piasek described him as joyful, not bitter. His granddaughter Katie remembered his "jokey, cheerful voice." After experiencing humanity's worst cruelty, Piasek chose to live differently.

Piasek didn't share his story publicly until a 1995 interview with the Shoah Foundation helped him open up. By 2009, he was speaking to communities across North Carolina, determined that young people remember what hatred can do.

His final message to students was simple but profound: "Don't hate anybody. Even if you don't like somebody, don't hate. That's my motto for the kids."

Goldberg challenges every audience to honor Piasek's legacy by choosing hope over hatred. In a world that often feels divided, one survivor's choice to spread joy instead of bitterness reminds us that our response to pain matters just as much as the pain itself.