A bespectacled Fred Kofin shuffles behind the lecturn in the basement of the Jasper Yellowhead Museum and Archives and surveys the silent crowd. His last speech in this location detailed the financial health of Arts Jasper, as the longtime accountant has assisted many volunteer groups in town during the past 60 years.

But today, his story is different.

Today, the story is about the three and a half years of his life spent in the notorious German concentration camp of Auschwitz.

“I am one of the ones who can be called lucky, considering what I went through in my 93 years.

“I am not one of the millions killed during the Second World War,” Kofin said.

Kofin had finished university with aspirations of becoming a judge when Hitler issued a declaration of war and invaded Poland on Sept. 1, 1939. His hometown was incorporated into the Third Reich and his mother’s house was confiscated, as Germany and the Soviet Union divided the country.

“They were arresting as many as they could of the political intelligentsia,” Kofin said.

He soon joined a resistance movement, acting as a courier in German-occupied Poland, but it wasn’t long before the Gestapo found him.

“I was arrested in the middle of the night by the Gestapo, but they didn’t have enough evidence against me to do what they did with my 18 friends in the Underground. Those 18 were executed by being hung in public.”

Instead, Kofin was sent to Auschwitz, the most notorious concentration camp in Nazi Europe.

“Three and a half years of my life were spent behind barbed wire. For them, we were only numbers. My number was 37278, which you can still see tattooed on my left arm,” Kofin said, unveiling his mark.

Much has been written about Auschwitz, about the horrors that were experienced there – its symbolic role in the death of millions of Jews. Kofin said much of what has been written is spot on to what he witnessed. One day, Kofin said he overheard German officials discussing how they had achieved a record of 12,000 deaths in one day.

The sights and smells of the camp still haunt him.

“Sometimes the crematorium could not handle all the corpses, so they would put them in big piles outside to be burned. One hot day in the summer of 1943, I had trouble breathing because the smoke was so bad from the burning of the bodies,” Kofin said.

It isn’t an image he’s forgotten.

“It is a complete truth and it is hard to understand some still deny the existence of those death factories.

“Prisoners came from all over Europe. Ninety-five per cent of people who died in death camps were Jewish... but not only Jews died. The death toll included 75,000 Poless and 20,000 gypysies,”

Yet Kofin’s experience was different than the majority of Auschwitz survivors. When he arrived at the death camp, the assessment officers asked if there was anyone who could type. Kofin, who was a hunt and peck typist at best, said he could and was given a test. The German officer left the room during the test, in which Kofin was asked to type his C.V., which he was able to complete.

“Thanks to my knowledge of the German language, I was spared the hard work that claimed the lives of others,” Kofin said.

Kofin worked closely with the assessment men, which kept him alive. He was even able to save the lives of some others, by getting them jobs in the kitchen and other spots in the camp. One man whom he was able to find work for in the kitchen, peeling potatoes, later found Kofin in a Polish hotel in 1948, and the two came to Canada together.

“This man came to me and said ‘Fred, you saved my life,’ Kofin said.

He felt conflicted working in the Auschwitz office, and says he and others were treated differently than most prisoners because he could speak German and type.

“We even had showers every day... It’s probably because (the assessment officer) liked me that I’m here today,” Kofin said.

While his life was spared, Kofin said there wasn’t a friendship between the two.

“He called me by my number, not my name.”

On top of this treatment, Kofin said his prayers kept him alive throughout the three and a half year imprisonment. He had to pray in secret, as Christians were also executed by the Nazis, he said.

“In my prayers, I prayed that I could come out alive and that I could return to my home,” Kofin said.

Finally in 1944, he was evacuated from the prison on the last transport of 2,000 Poles, and found himself working in a plane factory. By this time, the Nazis had decided to use prisoners as slaves instead of killing them. The allied troops continued their advance, and the Germans found themselves on the run. An advancing American army eventually led to Kofin’s escape.

“Because of the advancement of the American army, 40 of the sick prisoners were shot by Germans in the forest and the rest of us moved on foot for an unknown destination. The first night we slept in a cement factory on a cement floor and part of the group slept in an abandoned S.S. dog training facility,” Kofin said.

Some of the prisoners found abandoned dog biscuits, and ate as many as they could. Others saved them for a more desperate time, which proved to be prudent.

“After eating biscuits, many of the prisoners became very thirsty and developed diarrhea,” Kofin said.

Yet when they ran into the bushes to relieve themselves, they were shot by German soldiers. The group of Polish prisoners, that once numbered 400, was now down to 180.

Finally, after a night in which it became obvious the Germans were unsure where to go, Kofin and nine other prisoners managed to escape into a small forest.

“The next night, we were liberated by American troops on April 18, 1945,” Kofin said.

Unwilling to return to his home town where he feared ending up in a Soviet concentration camp, and with little reason to remain in Germany, his future was settling in Yellowhead, then Jasper. His father had been sent to Krakov, and he heard little from his mother, and was uncertain if she was still alive.

“I am proud to call Canada my second home for over 60 years,” Kofin said.

While he has resentment, there are forces stronger that hate.

“I had nightmares. But I was persecuted by the Germans, but then I married a German girl. So love doesn’t have any borders.”