A 72-year-old man managed to hold the attention of dozens of students as he warned them of the consequences of bullying and hate.
Andy Reti was only two years old in 1944, when he and his mother were forced out of their home in Hungary.
Seventy years later, as part of Holocaust Education Week, he shared his story with students at a Vaughan, Ont. school on Friday.
"I was sentenced to die even before I came to be alive," he told the hushed crowd gathered in the Bakersfield Public School gymnasium.
The group of students sat unusually still, with no cellphones, no chatter, and no laughs, devoting all of their attention to the man in front of them.
"I was just a Jewish bastard... alive, not worth living," according to Nazis, he said.
His father and grandfather left first, forced to join work camps and do hard manual labour. A few weeks later, he and his mother and grandmother were forced at gunpoint to abandon their home.
A few students wiped away tears when he told them what it was like leaving his home in Budapest for the last time.
They were taken to an abandoned race track that was so crowded with people that they had to stand, he said. They were separated, but Reti’s grandmother begged a policeman to save him. The policeman made sure the three were put in a group that was told they could go home.
"As we were leaving, they were shooting at us from the back. Unarmed people with babies in their arm. People on either side of us were murdered," he said loudly, but with his voice shaking.
Teenaged soldiers with guns forced everyone to give up their valuables. Reti told the students that his mother loved his father so much that she refused to give the Nazis her wedding band. She saved it by hiding it in his diaper.
Now wearing the ring on his left hand, he told the students that the ring survived the Holocaust. His father did not.
Reti's father was one of six million Jews who were killed during the Holocaust, he told the students through tears. His father was shot while attempting to escape.
They were rounded up again a few days later and taken to a ghetto in Budapest, where they waited out the war. They were liberated in 1945.
He read a quote from his mother: "You can't live with hatred in your heart all the time, but to forgive, I can't. And I can't forget it either."
Reti came to Canada and now has five children, four grandchildren, and a new life.
"How do I look now?" he asked the teens with a smile, wearing a leather vest covered in patches and a black and white bandana around his head.
In his new life, Reti is part of a Jewish motorcycle club. When he's not on his bike, he's telling students his experience with hate and bullying.
His lesson is one of caution: "When you see something wrong, do not be afraid to speak up, because that's how it happens.
