Ben Lesser

Ben Lesser is a Holocaust survivor, author, and the founder of the Zachor Foundation, which provides pins or mementos for holocaust speakers to give to audience members as a tangible remembrance of their experience. 

In May 1944, Lesser and his family were brought to the Auschwitz concentration camp. Later, he and his cousin, Isaac, survived the Death March to Buchenwald and the Death Train to Dachau, where they were later liberated. Lesser said this is where his story begins. “In most holocaust books, they end with liberation and that’s the end of the book. I felt that it must go to the present,” Lesser said. 

“I was still able to make a beautiful life for myself and my family. It’s so important for kids, especially those that come from broken families and they feel that they have a deprived childhood, and after listening to me or reading my book and seeing what I went through and still able to come up,” he said. “I point out that there is no such thing as a deprived childhood because it’s just another excuse. It is all a matter of choices. I feel that individuals can’t always choose what happens to them, but whether it’s a crisis or calamity, people can always choose to let it ruin their life or learn from it and move forward. So, it’s important to understand the consequences of personal choices. It’s possible to let tragedy or trauma become a reason to stop living, but it’s also possible to live through extreme circumstances and commit to a life that has meaning and that matters.”

After coming to America, Lesser took a job making deliveries.  “I used to work as a driver for UPS and they had a system where you can make more money doing the same hours by pushing yourself and doing the right things that right way, instead of goofing off. You can actually make much more money and be a producer—they had a great incentive system—they gave me an idea about business. They didn’t have to go out and watch the people they employed to see if they were goofing off or doing something they weren’t supposed to be doing because everyone drove themselves.”

He learned extra skills the company needed. “I found out how to drive a truck and a trailer. In the middle of the night, if they needed someone to take the truck load to a lot or something, they called on me. I wanted to know how to route packages, which is a profession, and I learned how to do it. Then, they needed a reporter, someone to write an article, which didn’t pay anything, and no one would do it. I did it and I hardly spoke English. For ten years in a row, I was the number one reporter for the entire company, and I hardly spoke English, so I was asking, ‘How. Why?’”

Lesser said he won trophies at the company banquet each year. “They wanted me so much as a company executive, but because I couldn’t pass that rigorous test they had me take, I didn’t have enough schooling at that point to pass it. They couldn’t take me in, but 25 years working for them without a single accident, every year being rewarded safe driving was very unusual—even a scratch or broken mirror counts. When I came back from work, I wouldn’t go with my buddies and get a six-pack or something. Instead, I asked my boss, ‘Is anyone in trouble, can I help?’ ‘Oh yeah, John is running late, please see if you can help him.’ I was the highest paid driver in Southern California for many years, but why? Because I did it full-heartedly, I loved what I was doing.”

This mindset was nothing new for Lesser.  “I am a strong believer that whatever you do, you have to be the best at it and whatever it is, try and find out what you can do to make your job successful. Forget about the clock, you find out what you can do to help your job if they need any help and what more can you do. Do it with your full heart. Be helpful and see how you can make the company prosper. Your boss will eventually realize that you are part of this and you will be rewarded. Don’t do it just for that reason, just whatever you do, try to be the best at that profession. I always tell people, ‘Not just good or very good, but the absolute best.’”

Interestingly, this mentality came from the darkness of the Holocaust. “The way I survived the Holocaust was because I did whatever I was asked to do, but I didn’t just do it because they asked me. I made sure I did it the best possible way so that there is no repercussions and no one and come back to me later and single me out because during the Holocaust, you didn’t want to be remembered, you just wanted to be a shadow that they would forget about,” Lesser explained. “I knew I had to be the best and do things the right way. There are no mistakes, you make one mistake and it’s over. It made me what I am today.”

After 25 years of working with UPS, Lesser made a career change and became a real estate broker.  “I had to be the best realtor. I thought, ‘How am I going to compete against all of these big offices?’ I’m from Europe, I barely spoke English and was going to be competing with them, but I would only go in if I was the best so, I started to go to night school and I became competent in real estate law. I had unbelievable brains, and I did it for many years and I felt finally that I was knowledgeable enough to try real estate. I dared to go into it, and I was very successful,” Lesser recalled. “This showed me what you can achieve in this country. There is no end if you really want it, and you work hard. This is what I’m telling the kids; you are so fortunate to be born in America. You can reach anything you want, who is going to stop you? Who is holding a gun against your head that you can’t do it? No one. It’s strictly a matter of choices and you can choose it.”

In 1995, Lesser decided to retire and move with his wife to Las Vegas.  Around this time, his grandson learned from his teacher that Lesser was a Holocaust survivor.  Only then did Lesser begin to speak publicly about his experiences and what they had taught him.  

“I’ll never forget that here in Las Vegas, there is one section in town that has a lot of gang members, and I spoke in this high school. On the stage, they had the teachers surround me because they didn’t know how the kids would behave—if they were going to start throwing things at me, they didn’t know. They were all gang members, and you could tell by the different color kerchiefs that they wore. Afterwards, when I speak, I always give out this little pin and it says ‘Zachor.’ Zachor means to remember the Holocaust. While I was speaking to them, within two hours, teachers chased the kids out because at three the buses came to pick them up and they all lined up to shake my hands and get a pin. I felt that the pin is very important and one girl, as she received the pin, she saw the pin and she said, ‘Mr. Lesser, we’ll cherish this pin for the rest of our lives and when we have children of our own and they find this pin, they’ll ask what the pin is and I’ll tell them it means to remember the Holocaust.’ When I heard this from this young girl, that was when I decided I had to do this, and I started to manufacture the pins, and I give them out to every listener. I don’t expect them to wear it, but it’s important for the future to show their kids,” Lesser said.

“Afterward, the teacher called me and asked me for my address, and they sent me a bundle of letters. The kids had all written a letter about what they took from my talk. By the way, I have about 10,000 letters and my great-grandchildren are going to have a good time going through them. One day, I received a phone call from a parent saying, ‘Mr. Lesser, what did you do to my son? When he came home after listening to you, he came home and gave me a hug and a kiss. He never did that in his life.’ Started to cry, ‘You can’t imagine how you changed him, he quit the gangs and stopped failing school. I will never forget what you did to my son.’ When I heard that—it makes it all worthwhile. You can’t imagine what a good feeling that gave me. It changes the youngsters. They realize, ‘Here is a man who had nothing coming to America and had no one and no education and look how he turned his life around.’ They have the schooling, and family, and education and are so far ahead so, they cannot use the excuse that they had a deprived childhood. No matter how bad their life is, it is still a wonderful life compared to mine so, it makes a big difference and turns them around.” 

Sometimes, he said, he gets letters from adults who are out of work: “‘After hearing you, there is no excuse, I’m going out tomorrow and finding a new job. I’ll do anything to make a good life for myself.’ I feel that is my purpose in life. People ask me, ‘Ben, how do you feel? You survived and some other members didn’t.’ My answer is always: God needed a witness. Because not all survivors can talk about it, it hurts too much. Those of us who talk about it, is so important because, we are running out of time, and we know it’s going to end soon.”

“When I speak to these kids, I point out the fact that the Nazis and Hitler didn’t start with killing, it all started with hate propaganda which is how it came to be killing,” Lesser explained. “You have to learn to appreciate each other. Education is very important because when you’re educated, you should know the difference between right and wrong, but I point that out to the youngsters especially. Right now, there is a bullying epidemic going on in schools, especially middle school and high schools. I point out the fact that Hitler was a big bully along with the Nazis and when you bully someone, you make an enemy for life. That person who was bullied will never forget you if you bullied them. Is this what you want to do, to grow up to become sadists and maybe even murderers when one thing leads to another? Why would you want to create enemies? 

Usually, I’m re-invited next year and so on and I ask the teacher to tell me if any of the kids that listened to me or read my book ever go around and bully anyone else. The answer is always the same, ‘Mr. Lesser, are you kidding me? They are the best-behaved children in this school, not only don’t they bully, but they go around to see how they can help or what they can do.’ It’s nice to hear that you are making a difference and doing something. One middle-school, I went there and had a hard time at first because what do you tell kids in the fifth grade? But I found the right subjects to talk about and the following year I came, and they showed me a bench in the hallway, and on the bench, is my picture and it says, ‘Ben’s Bench.’ I asked the teacher what it meant, and she said, ‘Mr. Lesser, any child that feels like they’re bullied or depressed for any reason, they go to that bench and sit down and the very first teacher that goes by has to counsel that child and make them feel better.’ I asked them if it really worked and she said, ‘Mr. Lesser, they’re the best-behaved children and you can see after the teacher counsels a child how they come back with a smile on their faces and they feel stronger and better.’ So, the following year, they had two benches. It worked apparently.”

Lesser emphasized the need to tamp down hate. “Anything we can do to make our kids grow up more humane and stop with the hatred, whether it’s anti-Semitism or anti-this-or-that, there is no difference. Usually, sometimes when the kids are asking me questions, many times, they would ask, ‘Mr. Lesser, what can I do to make this a better world?’ I point out to them that during World War II, the whole world was silent. Yes, you can do something, you can shout out and let your voices be heard. It will Go viral.”

Lesser noted that the Nazis not only destroyed Jews. “There were all the people that Hitler deemed had no right to exist in this world whether you were gay or Jehovah’s Witness, or any kind of religion. It’s strange to believe that men like Hitler—now Hitler, probably was a very educated man and was able to transform a lot of good people into monsters. It’s hard to believe how far words can transform the human body because they were not born monsters, they were human beings like you and I, yet they were able to do something like that.”

In 2009, Lesser founded the Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation.  “We’re doing an awful lot of good for the future to keep this world from forgetting. Someone must speak up for those millions who were slaughtered. ‘We were here in this world. Don’t forget us.’ This world would love to forget. We are doing everything humanly possible to keep the world from acquiring amnesia. We want them to continue to remember the Holocaust because it could happen again. It’s going on right now in many parts of this world. People have not learned from the past. If we didn’t have the Zachor Foundation, you can say, ‘Well, there are museums.’ But the person must go to that museum in order to find out what went on. We are going to the public on the website and all over, and I’m doing what I can to have them listen to me. We want them to hear us. We will not allow this to be forgotten. 

Lesser made the choice long ago to rise above the hatred, to not only survive, but thrive.  “A lot of people in the camps gave up. It was easier to die than to live through some of those circumstances. My cousin went with me on the death march. He begged me to sit down and have them walk past and shoot him so that it would be over with. I said, ‘As long as I’m alive, we will survive.’ I kept dragging him to another week. I was dragging him in the snow without shoes. In the end, he didn’t survive. He survived long enough to be liberated, but that night after liberation, he died in my arms, and maybe he couldn’t help but think, ‘Now I can die.’ He got me to liberation, and I will survive. Sometimes it just took the will power to survive and get through all these punishments,” Lesser said.

“I made a decision as a young man—’Ben, this is the first day of your life, you came to America.’ That was when I was 18 years old, and I came to this wonderful country and looked at the New York skyline and the ship that came in. But it had such an influence on me, and I said, ‘Ben, this is day one of your life, never forget the past, but from this day on, you’re going to make a success out of yourself and if you have a family, it’s going to be a successful family.’ Well, to me, what I do have is a success. I have never asked anyone to help me my whole life. I never collected a dime of unemployment. I just knew I had to do it and whatever I did, I knew I had to be the best.”

Lesser said he wanted his own children to grow up without fear. “I wanted them to feel like an American child. This is America, a free country,” Lesser said. “I wanted their friends to be American friends. I wanted them to mingle with all kinds of different nationalities. I didn’t want what the other Holocaust survivors wanted, to keep them safe and secluded. My kids knew I was a Holocaust survivor, but I never told them, and they never asked. I didn’t want to put that burden on them.”

He has very few memories of his life before the Holocaust.  “My parents were wonderful people and unfortunately, I don’t remember much from my home as a child. Somehow, my memories were erased by the bad things that happened to me,” he explained and then continued, “There are some memories coming back to me so, I know I must have had a very good upbringing.” Then quietly, ever so painfully, yet poignantly he looked upwards and whispered, “out of a wonderful family of seven only my sister Lota and I survived. The rest of the family was slaughtered.”

Lesser’s non-profit Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation is seeking 6 million “shout outs” or postings on their web-site to honor the 6 million voices silenced during the Holocaust  (https://www.i-shout-out.org).