On November 10, Stan Minkinow came to Bob Jones to talk about his life as a Holocaust survivor.

“I have never seen a group of high schoolers so riveted and genuinely impacted,” Maggie Moore, a Bob Jones student who attended Stan’s talk, said.

84-year-old Stan Minkinow was born in Poland to a Jewish mother and a Christian father and was sent to a ghetto as a child when German Nazis invaded Poland. Stan told a group of Bob Jones students about his grandfather’s death in the infamous Auschwitz concentration camp and family’s struggles to stay fed and trying to escape the ghetto.

“Whenever I stayed with my grandparents, you’d always hear gunshots,” Stan said.

After years of living in crowded ghettos with the threat of disease of malnourishment being a constant, the Minkinow family was able to buy their way out of the ghetto, but Stan didn’t leave Poland unaffected. Stan had to stop formal schooling when the Germans invaded Poland and had to start high school in Germany, under a new name and without knowing German.

Stan however, still prospered. After graduating high school, he enrolled in the American military and served for 27 years before starting his own business here in Huntsville.

Stan is a proud and hardworking American and said, “I’ve lived the American dream.”

Ms. Dauma, an English teacher at Bob Jones and who is currently writing Stan Minkinow’s biography said, “He has had immense success both personally and financially.”

Senator Jeff Sessions even recognized Stan Minkinow’s contributions American society to the President.

Although living through such a difficult time in history, Stan still continues to tell his story and highlight the difficult times that he had to endure.

This generation is the last to ever see and listen to the testimonies of Holocaust survivors.

In Lauren Bale‘s article on WAFF.com, Minkinow said, “It’s just something that needs to be told to the young people so they don’t forget. People have a tendency to forget history. But unfortunately some history has a tendency to repeat itself.”

After his talk, many students and faculty had the opportunity to ask Stan’s questions, shake his hand, or even ask for a selfie.

Maggie Moore said, “It was like shaking hands with history itself, but an actual human being.”