‘I never lost hope’: Holocaust survivor honored for his resilience by veterans in Carol Stream

George Mueller, a 93-year-old Holocaust survivor, isn’t one to get emotional, even as he recounts the horrors he saw as a child in Nazi concentration camps.

“All the time I was there, people were dying right and left. We had the bodies piled up this high,” said Mueller, gesturing about 4 feet high. “But I never thought about dying. It didn’t enter my mind. That’s the only way I can explain it. I was too busy staying alive.”

It was that spirit and resiliency that moved two of his fellow residents at Belmont Village Senior Living in Carol Stream — Myron Patinkin, a 101-year-old World War II veteran, and Korean War veteran Richard Nelson — to organize a ceremony to honor Mueller Thursday in advance of Saturday’s International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

“You suffered many hardships beyond anyone’s imagination,” Nelson said during the ceremony. “But by being the person you are — a man with a strong will and determination to survive — you got through it all.”

His friends gave Mueller a Holocaust survivor pin during the ceremony and saluted him as residents in the audience held up battery-operated candles.

Mueller was 8 years old when his mother put him and his then-3-year-old sister Ursula on a “Kindertransport“ train in 1938 that was part of an organized rescue effort to get children out of Nazi-controlled Germany. It was shortly after his father, uncle and other Jewish men they knew were arrested, beaten, starved, and nearly killed. His father was returned but died soon after.

Mueller never saw his mother again after she put them on the train. He believes she died in a concentration camp in Poland.

Mueller and his sister made it to Holland, where they lived in a convent until 1943. Local police then took them to a concentration camp in Vught. They were moved to the Westerbork camp and finally to the Bergen-Belsen concentration camp in Germany, where they ultimately were liberated by the Russian army while on a death train.

The brother and sister returned to Holland and ultimately immigrated to the United States to live with family in Chicago in 1947.

Mueller kept his survival story a secret until the early 1990s when he went on a reunion trip to Germany with other survivors. He later wrote a book about his mother’s sacrifice and his journey to freedom called "Lucie’s Hope“ and now frequently shares his stories with local students whenever he’s asked.

Mueller said he doesn’t think about the Holocaust every day. But when he does, the stories he can tell are vivid and harrowing.

He talked about a time in a concentration camp where he was so hungry he tried to eat a piece of wood.

“People don’t understand hunger. I don’t understand it anymore, but I know I had it then,” he said.

He was so desperate he risked being shot to approach a guard at night and beg him for food for him and his sister. The soldier told Mueller to come back the next night and then gave him a single piece of bread that Mueller shared with his sister.

The encounter reinforced to Mueller that not everyone was evil.

“I never lost hope,” he said.

Mueller said he was honored by the gesture his friends made in organizing the ceremony. He said he’s always befriended every World War II veteran he ever met.

“They can do no wrong in my book,” Mueller said. “That’s just the way it is.”