SALAMANCA – Peter Loth, a Holocaust survivor and public speaker, shared his story with many students on Wednesday at Salamanca High School, and had a dramatic effect on the audience.

“As long as I am alive, I will go all over the world and speak about the Holocaust,” he said, his blue eyes full of passion. “We have to know the truth.”

“I was born in Stutthof concentration camp in Poland,” he said, adding that Stutthof was just one of many death camps during World War II. Loth said that although 1,600 major camps were reported, each camp had sub-camps that were just as terrible as the others. “Every single camp is a major camp because no matter how you kill people, that is never a position a human should be in.”

According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum website, Stutthof concentration camp was built by the Nazi regime in 1939. It began as a civilian internment camp, but became a full concentration camp in 1942.

He described the different methods of how the Nazi regime tortured and killed the occupants of the concentration camps, showing pictures of terrible scenes.

“You have to know the whole history,” he told students, adding that the Nazis used gas chambers, machine guns and more to murder prisoners. “You saw mass graves all over the place. Would you be able to forgive?”

Loth showed the students how during World War II, people of Jewish faith had to wear a yellow Star of David on their clothes to differentiate them from everyone else.

“Think if someone asked you to do that today,” he said.”You would be mad, but today we mark each other. What right do we have?”

Massive groups of people were rounded up and loaded on to cattle cars like animals, Loth said. According to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum statistics, by 1945 the Nazis had killed one out of every three Jewish people in Europe.

The Jewish people were not the only ones terrorized and imprisoned by the Nazis, Loth said. Many Muslims, Americans, French, British and other groups of people were imprisoned or killed.

“Every soul who went through those camps should be recognized,” he said. “When President Dwight Eisenhower went there, he could not believe what he saw.”

Loth added that Eisenhower insisted on bringing information be brought to many, because there would come a time when people would say the Holocaust didn’t happen.

After the liberation of the death camp by the Russians, his mother put him in the custody of Juliana Szczepanska, a Polish woman, until she retrieved him safely.

“She said she was too weak and that she would come back and get me,” Loth said. “Szczepanska was my Matka – she became my everything. But she was not my mother, she was a stranger that tried to protect me.”

Loth and his “Matka” lived amid the rubble and struggled just to survive.

“We lived on the ground and in the sewer system,” he said, showing slide after slide of the destruction the war had brought. “We ate mice and rats. We survived.”

The Russian police took Loth away from Szczpanska, putting him in an orphanage where he was put to work. Loth was made to wear a Star of David even then.

“I am Jewish,” he said. “I am not ashamed of the Star of David, but even after the war, we were marked.”

During his time at the orphanage, he and the other children performed hard labor and suffered abuse at the hands of Russian soldiers and orphanage staff.

“We were raped, beaten, abused … some of the orphans were executed by soldiers,” he said, adding that he saw his own friend shot in front of him at the age of seven or eight. “My Matka took off her clothes and said ‘Take me and let them live.'”

Loth said the only reason he survived was because of her. The soldiers followed them home and sexually assaulted her.

“My friend and I used to lay in the fields and cry out to God ‘Why does no one love us?'” he said.

After several years of life between the orphanage and living with his Szczpanska, he was picked up by the police and put in prison. He faced months of torture at the hands of the Russian police as they asked who he knew at the U.S. Army base. They thought Loth was a spy. He was 14 years old.

“Do you know what a rifle beating is?” he asked. “They break your hands, they beat your ribs and it goes on and on.”

The police discovered that Loth’s mother had married an American soldier, and was writing to claim her son. The police let him go after 16 months of confinement.

Eventually, Szczepanska came to him and told him that she was not his real mother, and that he must go to Germany where his mother was waiting.

“I crossed at Checkpoint Charlie,” he said, adding that he watched Szczpanska wave good-bye. She could not accompany him because she had no visa. “Now, it was time to meet my mom. We couldn’t speak because she spoke German and English and I spoke Polish and Russian.”

Loth said they wept and embraced, sharing their desperation and pain.

In 1959, Loth and his family moved to the America, relocating to Georgia.

“Then, I was introduced to the Klu Klux Klan,” he said, adding that his stepfather was African American. “No matter which country I went to, the racism was still there.”

Loth said that he was subject to more abuse and harassment during this time, from all sides. The family moved again to Kansas, where his step-father became an alcoholic and began abusing his sisters. After so much, Loth couldn’t take any more and ran away.

Ike Skelton, a U.S. representative, became involved in Loth’s life after he was picked up by a Missouri sheriff.

“He found me a family and helped me with education,” he said.

Loth continued on, trying to block out the past. He was married and got divorced, and finally met his current wife, Valerie Loth.

“She took me as I was,” he said, adding that they had eight children and 12 grandchildren.

Loth told the students that if he could forgive all those who had abused and hurt him, they could forgive others, too.

“Forgiveness is the message here. We have to learn how to set our differences aside, because if we don’t, history will repeat itself,” he said, adding that people are all the same underneath. “We can smile together, even though we don’t know each other. It is all about caring for one another.”

He added that the current tension in the world is troubling.

“The Nazi spirit is in place. History is already repeating itself,” Loth said, adding that the social climate now is similar to the social climate during World War II. ” We witness the Neo-Nazis in the paper and the parliament in Germany and look at what ISIS is doing. It’s not any different.”

Lisa Monacelli, former teacher, met Loth at the Eldred World War II Museum while on a field trip. Monacelli and fellow teacher, Danielle Eaton, were able to bring him in for a presentation. This is his third visit to Salamanca High School.

“You just can’t put a price on an experience like this,” Monacelli said of how valuable the presentation was to the students. “Anyone can benefit from his message, but these kids are the ones he needs to reach.”

For more information on Loth, his experiences or his book “Peace by Piece,” visit www.peterloth.com.