FORT HOOD — Retired Army Colonel Ralph Hockley spoke on Fort Hood Thursday in honor of the Days of Remembrance to pay tribute to the millions of Jewish and non-Jewish victims during World War II.
His story could be made into an action film. Hockley escaped Nazi Germany with his family to France, but with Hitler gaining ground, it got dangerous there, too.
Hockley calls himself a survivor, not a Holocaust survivor because he didn't end up in the camps. His father did, however. Hockley started off his talk by giving a history lesson about how Hitler's Germany came into power. But he quickly started weaving in his own story.
His dad, a butcher, decided it was getting too dangerous in Germany, so they moved to Marseille, France. He started going to school there, but the leader at the school kicked him out because he was Jewish--a move Hockley described as the best thing that ever happened to him.
"It's the daily harassment from the beginning made your life miserable. When I was six-years-old, seven-years-old, my best friend turning on me and called me a 'dirty Jew' and that's the kind of stuff that got you alienated, wanting to get out," he said.
His mother offered up his services to the Quakers in the south of France and it was that kind of job at 14-years-old that really could have saved his life.
Hockley praised the efforts of a U.S. Senator Hiram Bingham who helped thousands of Jewish people and others get emergency visas to escape the Nazi dictatorship, and that included Hockley and his family. They left on a ship bound for the West Indies on May 6, 1941, and then traveled on an ocean liner ship to New York.
"It was the hand of God," Lieutenant Dovid Egert., fort Hood Jewish Chaplain for units including the 1st Cavalry Division said.
He joined the Army in the United States, commissioned in 1948 in counterintelligence. Hockley served and survived seven campaigns. He was part of the de-Nazification program, going after the Nazis who he fled from years before.
"I would say it's a great pleasure because this way my way to see justice performed," he explained.
He said one of the faults of the Germans is they take records of everything.
Hockley finished his speech by reciting a poem by Martin Niemoller, called "First they came".
Approximately 6,000,000 Jewish people, alone, were murdered during the war.
Hockley shared his experiences at the Phantom Warrior Center on Fort Hood. He also mentioned he is deeply disturbed by the ongoing atrocities in Syria, saying it is unacceptable and something must be done.