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At 77, Nazi Camp Survivor Earns Ph.D.
Forty-five years before he ever set foot on a college campus, Tadeusz Debski discovered his thirst for knowledge in the worst of environments, the Flossenburg concentration camp in Germany between 1941 and 1945.
There, the days were filled with horror, which he can only recall with a far-off look.
"Nothing went to waste in the camps," says Debski, who also spent two weeks in Auschwitz. "Prisoners were cut up and searched for gold or jewelry they might have swallowed before they died. Their skins were used for book and lamp covers."
To escape from his world of death and bestiality, Debski read.
"Most scholars advance the idea that prisoners in camps were so stamped down that they became like clay in the hands of the SS," he says. "However, not only moral but also intellectual life existed in the camps." Flossenburg had hundreds of books in its library, but most of them went unread because prisoners were too tired from hard labor in a granite quarry. Debski, however, would wake up at 4 a.m. and read for one hour before beginning his workday - while he was able to check out books from the library, reading in his barrack was forbidden.
"The camps pulled gray into everyday life," he says. "You had to figure out how to survive with your human dignity intact. It's just a question of will and believing you can withhold the worst pain and torture. I thought, 'If I survive, I need to learn.'"
In spite of his experience, Debski, who is Catholic, refuses to call himself a Holocaust survivor, a term he says must be reserved for Jews.
"I consider myself a victim," he says. "But no matter how bad I had it, Jews had it worse."
His yearning for an education was dashed by the harsh realities of post-war Europe. He went to work as a miner in Belgium.
"When we were released, we had to become re-accustomed with society and how to live in it once again," he says.
Debski says many people could not readjust to their old lifestyles and ended up committing suicide. Others ended up in mental hospitals. According to him, "There are many kinds of survivors. Some believe they've witnessed something important and write about it as a therapy."
It wasn't until his 70s that life allowed him to do just that. After immigrating to the United States in 1953, Debski spent more than 20 years working as a factory worker and machinist. As he neared retirement, he decided to go to school and in 1986, at age 65, earned a bachelor's degree from Roosevelt University. Debski went on to pursue a doctorate at UIC, which he was awarded last semester at age 77.
Debski's dissertation, "The Battlefield of Ideas: Nazi Concentration Camps and their Polish Prisoners," is being considered for publication by the University of Nebraska Press. Debski said his dissertation topic was inspired by the many mistakes contained in some books about concentration camps.
Richard Levy, UIC associate professor of history and chair of Debski's dissertation committee says, "The experience he went through could make someone into a bitter cynic. I think it's quite remarkable that he's so humane."
Debski says he has been an unwavering optimist ever since he saw a camp prisoner, weak after being forced to stand at attention for 42 hours, share a small piece of bread with another starving prisoner.
"If people can be so good in such conditions so close to death, there's no reason to be a pessimist," he says.
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