Holocaust survivor dies at 89

By Jay Turner

Israel “Izzy” Geller, a beloved community figure whose amazing tale of survival at the hands of the Nazis became an inspiration to generations of local residents, passed away on Friday, November 8, at the age of 89.

A resident of Canton for the past 20 years, Geller had served the town for a decade as a crossing guard and was a dedicated family man and an active congregant at Temple Beth Abraham. But he was also, in the words of Canton Police Chief Ken Berkowitz, a “true hero” — a man who showed courage and resilience in the face of unspeakable suffering and cruelty.

A native of Poland, Geller was the only member of his immediate family who survived the Holocaust, which claimed the lives of approximately six million Jews during World War II. Geller himself spent the majority of his formative years performing forced labor in ghettos and concentration camps, including Auschwitz, before he was finally liberated by American soldiers in the spring of 1945.

At a labor camp in Benchen, Geller did everything he could to survive, performing odd jobs for the overseers and collecting a secret stash of potatoes, which he shared with others at a great risk to his safety. While there he witnessed beatings and multiple executions, including one instance where five men were hanged for smuggling the potatoes into camp.

From Benchen, Geller was sent to Auschwitz, where he was branded with a serial number and stripped of all humanity. As he told the Citizen in a 2011 interview, “Coming out of the shower in Auschwitz, my name was not Israel Geller. My name was 159320.”

Although his stay was brief at the infamous death camp, Geller was there long enough to witness the mass slaughter of Jews. He never forgot the smell of burning bodies or the horrifying sight of corpses piled up in wagons.

“There were children in those wagons,” he told the Citizen in 2011, fighting back tears. “Those kids came out dead, the mothers with the kids together.”

From Auschwitz Geller went to Warsaw, the largest ghetto in Poland, and he later spent time in two other camps — Dachau and Meldorf, both in Germany — before boarding another train that was headed for the Alps, where the prisoners were to be executed. But they never reached their destination, as American troops attacked the engines, stopping the train and freeing all of the prisoners aboard.

Just 20 years old at the time, Geller was a free man but had no one to turn to and “nowhere to go.” He ended up moving in with an elderly couple in a small town outside Frankfurt, where he found work as a police officer. Four years later, without money or family, he arrived at Ellis Island in New York. From there he went to Roxbury, where he met his future wife, Marilyn (Brockman), and the couple later settled in Randolph before moving to Canton in the early 1990s.

Geller worked for many years as a presser, and he later went to work for the town of Canton as a crossing guard in the Luce School district, manning the intersection of Sawyer Avenue and Pleasant Street.

For his 50^th wedding anniversary, he returned to his native Poland and toured Auschwitz and other sites with Marilyn. And he spoke often and at length about his Holocaust survival story, granting numerous interviews and speaking requests over the years while also recording a two-hour testimony for the USC Shoah Foundation’s visual history library.

In addition to Marilyn, Geller leaves his two children, Gayle and Steven, their spouses, and five grandchildren, as well as several nieces and nephews.

He was remembered at a funeral service on Sunday, November 10, at Stanetsky Memorial Chapel. To share a memory of Izzy or to offer condolences to the Geller family, visit the online guestbook at www.stanetsky.com.

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