The Montgomery Advertiser from Montgomery, Alabama • 19

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA FRIDAY, APRIL 20, 1984 MAY LAMAR 7 What makes Olympics special? It was the last full day of camp. In the morning, families in station wagons would arrive in clouds of disturbed orange dust, collect their chigger-bitten offspring with their reeking laundry bags, and head for home. On thla mufffrv Anmiat mnminfl 1 i if it. to, Prisoners at electric fence cheer the Americans after liberation from the Dachau concentration camp In 1945 prison camps were set up with munitions factories, torture chambers and crematoriums 7 TP" V. HOLOCAUST 1 Mildred sat by the pond that everyone referred to as "The Lake" and stared out across its slate gray water into the stand of pines beyond.

"My aunt is picking me up tomorrow," she said. Mildred pronounced the word "aunt" in the way that makes it rhyme with the "mont" in piedmont. "We goin' straight to McDonalds." She tugged at her thin camp T-shirt that she could have fit into twice over. "It's sure I ain't done so much here. I can't swim, I can't play ball I can't even stand in line at the mess hall and cut up." Mildred looked down at her legs that could not have been as big around as the business end of a baseball bat and let her eyes rest there.

The wheelchair she sat in had not carried her to the lake, the road had been too steep and too rough. Anyone could carry Even the youngest and smallest members of the female staff could carry Mildred. Some of guys could cradle her in the crook of one arm and tote her around as if she were a helium-filled, human balloon. The counselor sitting beside Survivor remembers terror-filled days, loss of family J- Mildred there in the sand tried to reassure the teen-ager by telling her that she had made a lot of new friends during the week, learned a bunch of new songs and had made some pretty good stuff in the arts and crafts hut. The counselor's words sounded stiff and false and trite in her own ears.

She hoped Mildred would not take them that way. "I don't know why they sent me here," said Mildred as if the counselor had not spoken. "It's fun and all, but it By MAY LAMAR Advertiser Staff Writer HOLOCAUST (now) 1). Gnat or total destruction by Ore. Burnt whole.

Jewish survivors of Adolph Hitler's attempt to create a "master race" do not jump forward every day with recollections of their days in German concentration camps during World War II. One can hardly blame them. To do so, they must be willing to recount an event that few people, perhaps even themselves, will ever really be able to comprehend. "Many of them are glad that it's behind them and they sort of want to forget it," said University of Alabama professor, Charles Prigmore. Marcia Feldman, spokesman for the four-year-old United States Council on the Holocaust, based in Washington, D.C., agrees with Prigmore.

Prigmore is the state's representative to the Council. "Many children of survivors grew up in homes where the subject was never brought up," she said. But Leon Gross, now the plant manager for a large Tuscaloosa garment manufacturer, decided he would talk about it. Those who died during the Holocaust will be honored during the national Days of Remembrance week, April 29 -May 5. Churches and civic groups around the state are being urged to conduct ceremonies during the week.

The State of Alabama will hold a closed interfaith remembrance ceremony at the Governor's Mansion April 29. The experiences of survivors such as Gross will be a major focus of the event. Gross was 15 years old in 1939 when Hitler's anti-Jewish pogrom surfaced in the outlying region of Poland where he lived. Jews were initially stripped of all rights. Parents deeply religious Gross was the son of simple, but deeply religious, parents.

His father, Bernard, and mother, Lola, were tailors in a small, but well-established, Polish village. Fresh out of public school, Gross, at 15, assumed be would one day be a tailor, too. But by the time he was 17, Gross said, German harassment had become a hellish and heavy fact of life for him and his family. Jews were restricted to a certain area of the village, which changed at the whims of the Nazi occupiers. Jews were forbidden to use telephones or the mail, and were made to wear a Star of David or a number so they could be easily identified.

"The Nazis would murder a man on the street for not wearing his star," Gross said. "They might hang a man on the street if they said he was too short, for instance," he added. "There were no courts, just open murder." The Nazis placed a great deal of stress upon Gross' six sisters and brothers and his family. They were humiliated and hungry. "Morale was very low," Gross said.

He was 17 the day a group of Christian villagers told him the Nazis were planning to take the Jewish people of his village away on a train and exterminate them. Shaken, the youngster reported this news to his family immediately. They could not believe him. "My parents were very, very religious. They could not comprehend how something like that could happen." They would remain in the village and accept God's will, whatever it might be.

Twenty-four hours before the Nazis came and herded his and other village families into cattle cars, Gross and a few comrades ran away from home. The Jewish people in two nearby villages also were taken. Gross said he estimates a total of about 15,000 to 20,000 Jews were involved. Later, he would learn his family was exterminated some 48 hours after they left the village. "There were those in my village who were actually looking forward to the move," Gross said, "hoping that a better life would come of it." No relatives alive Despite bis large family and "hundred's" of cousins, aunts and uncles he bad known in his tight-knit community, Gross has no known living relatives today.

Gross roamed the Polish woodlands with a handful of friends and other refugees for several months, until he was too exhausted and hungry to go on. Gross was sent by the leaders of his roving underground gang to a Jewish community that had not yet been annihilated by the Germans. He rested there. Shortly after settling in his new home, he was loaded into a train and taken to a German work camp in another part of Poland. He escaped three days later and went back into the woods.

Not long after, he made his way to another intact Jewish community, exhausted. There, the Germans found him again. He eventually wound up in another camp, this one, Buchenwald, an international work camp for political prisoners in Germany. "I really don't have an answer as to how I survived," See HOLOCAUST, page 2B makes me hurt, too." All week she had sat and watched the other handicapped campers the ones that could race each other to breakfast and jump off the diving board. "I don't even fit in at a place for people like me," Mildred said.

"And now this Olympics stuff. What am I supposed to do be in the picher drawin contest? On that morning, Mildred was about MBIT i as bummed out as an intelligent, 14- year-old paraplegic-with-comphca tions can get. The counselor didn't blame her at all for getting the blues Prisoners sit outside Buchenwald barracks after being freed there was handed out sparingly to hungry prisoners 'Hill Street' star returns to stage Mildred waits to watch The Olympic games started up after supper. Mildred wheeled herself over to the porch of the rec hall, put on the brake and waited for everything to begin so she could watch it happen. Another wheelchair camper pulled up and parked next to Mildred.

"Get psyched up, Jenny," said an approaching counselor, the whistle of authority around his neck. "You're in the potato relay." Jenny sat there with her mouth open and let this news sink in. Mildred doubled over, her hand covering her mouth, to suppress her giggles. "What are you laughing at, Mildred?" the counselor said. ''You're signed up for the 50-yard dash." Mildred politely informed the counselor that the only dashes she was familiar with involved salt between the thumb and forefinger.

Fifteen minutes later, Mildred was at the starting mark. Three minutes after that, she had crossed the finish line a wheel-and-a-half ahead of the pack. Mildred accepted her medal with characteristic humility and grace, despite the roar of congratulatory remarks and chants that went up around her as she put the coveted prize around her neck. When the games continued, Mildred wheeled herself over to a huge live oak and parked so as to be, she thought, out of the view of the rest. She sat there in the chair, her good fight hand turning the medal over and over and over.

Tears were in her eyes, but every few seconds she would rake the hand with the medal in it across her face, to keep it clear of telltale streams. A counselor stole up beside her. "Mildred, are you crying?" "Hell no," Mildred said. To swear was not Mildred's style, but the counselor figured Mildred had had to do something to bolster such an inaccurate reply. "Aren't you happy you won?" was all the counselor could think of to say.

Mildred grinned now, for the first time in a while, and turned herself in her chair to face the counselor. "You think just 'cause I'm In this Wheelchair, I can't cry for Joy?" It is no wonder they call them the Special Olympics. By JERALD HYCHE Advertiser Staff Writer BIRMINGHAM Kiel Martin, better known as Detective Johnny LaRue in NBC's "Hill Street Blues," has come a long way from making a guest appearance as a sleazy character on somebody else's biggest current hits. Now, he shares the glory of being a regular on one of television's biggest current hits. Now, he has exposure, when before that's all he lived for.

Now, he has financial security when, before, paying the bills was near impossible. But the pace of life has not increased with the success; instead it has slowed a bit, and Martin is able to enjoy his favorite pastimes, such as fishing and reading. And now, after 17 years' absence, he is returning to the stage; and what better place to make a comeback than in Alabama? To Martin, there is none. "When I got the phone call about this play, he told me it was in Alabama," Martin said in recent interview. "He almost sounded apologetic about it, and I told him, 'Hey, that must be the most lovely working conditions in the "I thought it out for a while because you have to be careful, people always seek me out for work.

Then I dialed the phone at 6 o'clock one morning, it was 8 o'clock here, and I spoke to Rick Plummer, the director, for five minutes and I just felt good about it." Felt good about play Martin, 39, had read the play, and said he felt good about it, too. The play, titled "Bent," deals graphically Martin came to Birmingham immediately following "Hill Street's" final shooting of the season, April 5, to begin working with the rest of the play's 14-member cast, all students and faculty members at UAB. Martin will continue practicing before "Bent's" opening night, do the show, and then take off to the Florida Keys, near where he was raised with the sun, surf and bone fishing. But the vacation will end. And Martin admits that "Hill Street" will end, too, probably after a couple of more seasons, despite the show's skilled writers, artists, directors and special effects crew.

And the wardrobe crew, which Martin says transforms perenially-sunny Los Angeles into "a filthy, midwestern American, urban-industrial city" that puts sweat stains under the arms in the summer and snow on the streets for Christmas. "That's what I call professional," he said. As far as what happens after the show for the single actor who plays the guitar, writes songs for himself, and loves his dog, he said, everyone will just have to wait and see like everything else it seems. "The problem with this work is the waiting," he said, grinning. "Waiting to get work, waiting to have your work shot, waiting for the film to be released, waiting for the reviews to come out, and even waiting for a plane.

And then you have to wait for your money before you get paid! don't know what I'll do. I'm happy today. Tomorrow will take care of itself." Tickets for "Bent" are available by calling Theater UAB at 934-3236. tration camps during World War II. Martin will play the lead role in the University of Alabama in Birmingham's Theater presentation of "Bent" April 24-28 at 8 p.m., and, according to Martin, he is perfect for it.

That's because Max, the main character, is, as described by Plummer, "decadent, hedonistic, opportunistic, but most importantly, he is in personal anguish, deeply troubled by his inability to accept who and what he is." Those elements, to Martin, fall right in line with the type character he has usually portrayed in such series as "Dragnet," "Ironsides," and "Harry where he usually played the "psychos" that terrified the neighborhoods. "Yeah, if you wanted some babies killed, call Kiel Martin," he said. "If you wanted some women raped, call Kiel "For some reason, I've got the attitudes and looks and moves of the psycho down." In "Bent," however, Martin's Max will be "a person of great worth," even though "he only learns to accept himself through self-destruction," Plummer said. Play is 'shocking' The play, which has been described as "shocking," "passionate," "bizarre" and "bloody," follows the straight and gay world and the reaction of each to Hitler's takeover and the nightmare of the holocaust that follows. "I went crazy for it," Martin said.

"It's a wonderful, tragic, funny, beautiful play." with the little-known Nazi extermina Martin, last row second from right, poses with 'Hill Street' cast will be performing at Theater UAB next week tion of 10,000 homosexuals in concen.