Holocaust survivor Eliezer Schwartz recently completed a PhD at Haifa University at the age of 81. He drew on his own experiences to help him write his thesis, “Forced Laborers in the Third Reich.”
“At 16 I was taken to Aushwitz and then moved from camp to camp for a year until the end of the war,” Schwartz told of his past. “After liberation, I returned to my hometown in Hungary, but I saw that no other members of my family had returned, so I decided to emigrate to Israel.”
Schwartz completed his Bachelor’s degree at the age of 45 and afterwards earned two Master’s degrees in anthropology and urban planning. But it was only when he retired at age 75 that he had time to tackle his doctorate.
Despite the late start, Schwartz says his doctorate “went smoothly.” He drew on his past in labor camps as a unique source of information. “I have first-hand familiarity with the topic and how the process was managed,” he explained. “It is a source of information that no other historian had access to.
On the other hand, the 81-year-old couldn’t let his past unduly cloud his research attempts. “I cut myself completely from my personal and emotional story,” he said. “I forced myself to.”