Stephen Nasser waited more than 50 years to tell his story of surviving the Holocaust.
The 90-year-old North Las Vegas resident began writing “My Brother’s Voice” in 1944 on the back of cement bags he picked up while working in a Nazi-occupied concentration camp.
Born in 1931 as Pista Nasser in Hungary, he was forced into the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp at age 13 and later transferred with his brother to the Muhldorf camp in Bavaria, Germany, until he was liberated in 1945 by Allied forces.
He was the only one of 21 family members to survive the Holocaust.
“I had a very positive attitude even when they (Nazis) beat me,” Nasser said, noting he had to keep a strong mental fortitude to survive. “Physically, they controlled me. But they didn’t control my mind.”
Nasser has dedicated his life to detailing his experience with more than 1,000 speaking appearances, including Tuesday at Metro Police headquarters near downtown Las Vegas. Nasser was recruited to speak to officer by Capt. Dori Koren.
“I had the chance to meet Stephen a couple of months ago and that one conversation in Stephen’s living room had a significant impact on me,” Koren said.
Nasser spoke for about 90 minutes and recalled his childhood, from living in Nazi-occupied Hungary to his time in the concentration camps until his liberation, when doctors said he weighed just 72 pounds. He accompanied his lecture with photo slides of his boyhood home, a historical site in Budapest that still stands today, and archive photos of concentration camps.
Nasser also recalled the time he witnessed his aunt beaten, presumably to death, and his toddler cousin murdered by Nazi guards at Auschwitz. His aunt’s husband — who served in the Hungarian Army for most of World War II — was his only surviving relative. Nasser waited until his uncle’s death to release his diary as the 2003 book — “My Brother’s Voice: How a Young Hungarian Boy Survived the Holocaust” — to protect his uncle from the details of his wife’s and child’s murder.
He also detailed watching his older brother, Andris, die in his arms at the Muhldorf camp, and the conversation he had with him about never giving up his brother’s dying moments. Hence the name of his memoir.
Among those in attendance was Clark County Sheriff Joe Lombardo, members of the Metro Multicultural Advisory Committee, the Anti-Defamation League, the Israeli American Council, Jewish Nevada and the Republican Jewish Coalition.
“How can we be better and how can we convey the thoughts and benefits and the solutions provided by Stephen to our troops and to our people?” Lombardo told the crowd.
“It was emotional,” said Officer James Knowlton, a former U.S. Marine. “The Marines have a deep history in Germany in World War II. And being a Marine it makes me proud that we had a big part in liberating these people.
“Hearing his (Nasser’s) story, it’s hard not to get emotional in some way.”
Nasser ended the session by fielding questions from the audience. One exchange was with Rokai Yusufzai, a community affairs liaison for the Muslim and Afghan community, who discussed with Nasser the similarities of the Nazis to the Taliban regime that recently took power from the Afghan government.
Yusufzai told Nasser his story served as an inspiration and he would tell as many people as he could, especially those with ties to Afghanistan, to not give up faith.
Nasser agreed and noted that despite the atrocities happening at the hands of the Taliban and elsewhere around the world, freedom always comes at a price.
“We are all human beings,” Nasser said. “I don’t care if you’re yellow, black, green, where you’re from — you are a human being. And you have a right to live.”