Holocaust survivor Max Glauben dead at 94
DALLAS (CBSDFW.COM) - Max Glauben, a Holocaust survivor who worked closely with the Dallas Holocaust and Human Rights Museum, has died. He was 94.
Glauben was born in 1928 and grew up in Warsaw along with his mother, father, and little brother Heniek. The apartment they lived in was designated a part of the Warsaw Ghetto, where thousands of Jews were confined to an area of just 1.3 square miles, in 1940. They were confined there until the defeat of the Warsaw Ghetto Uprising in 1943.
Max and his family were then deported by box car to the Majdanek death camp on the outskirts of Lublin. There, his mother and younger brother were killed. Max and his father were selected for slave labor and transported to Budzyn, but his father was later killed there in retribution when three inmates went missing.
Max was held in four other slave labor camps before being sent on a death march to Dachau. A few weeks into the march, Max and his fellow inmates were liberated by the US Army. He immigrated to America in 1947 and eventually moved to Dallas.
Glauben spent decades sharing his first-hand accounts of the horrors he faced while Adolf Hitler and the murderous Nazi regime slaughtered, tortured, and gassed over six million Jews to death.
Among the exhibits in the museum is an exact replica of a Nazi box car used to transport Jews and other victims to concentration and death camps. Glauben remembered riding one for five days with at least 100 people inside and no room to sit, no bathroom, no food or water, and just two small openings for air.
Despite the atrocities he saw firsthand, Glauben said he never gave up hope. He saw hope in the new museum building, which it moved into in 2019, as well. "Every time I look at the building, the [Hebrew] letter Chai comes to mind, and what it means: life," Glauben said.
In 2021, the museum opened an interactive exhibit which featured a hologram and voice activation, allowing Glauben to answer audience questions for years to come.
