Las Vegas Sun93%
Daughter's return to Germany keeps her father’s Holocaust legacy alive 41%
7/18/2026, 2:00:00 AM
Keywords: Holocaust, Germany, Remembrance, Legacy, Survivor, Nammering, Death Train, Zachor Foundation
BS Summary: This article contains 20 faulty reasoning types, including Negativity Bias, Biased Writer Voice, and Indoctrination, with Appeal to Emotion as the most egregious example at 14.8% saturation with 181 hits. Analysis detected 1,124 faulty-reasoning hits from 1,222 analyzed words, generating a BS Score of 45.9% and a BS Rank of 41% (10,537 of 17,784 articles). This article is better (less manipulative) than 59.20% of the article peer group.
In April, Gail Lesser-Gerber, president and executive director of the Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation, traveled to Passau, Bavaria, Germany, to serve as guest speaker at a memorial ceremony in the nearby village of Nammering.
The occasion was solemn: a remembrance for the 794 souls murdered there in the final days of World War II, when a notorious death train from Buchenwald to Dachau came to a stop and Nazi soldiers forced prisoners from the cattle cars, made them dig their own graves and shot them.
The train carried 5,009 prisoners in 54 wagons over three weeks without food.
When it stopped in Nammering, it was the prisoners in the rear wagons who were forced out.
Ben Lesser was in a closed car at the front of the train.
He did not hear or see what was happening behind him.
Gail is Ben's daughter.
Traveling to Nammering meant standing where her father had been, giving voice to his memory and bearing witness on behalf of those who never came home.
During a graveside ceremony in the forest near the train station, Gail delivered her speech.
About 60 people stood in attendance beneath the trees, gathered around the granite memorial.
Her words are published here:
Hello, I am Gail Lesser-Gerber.
I am second generation and the daughter of Holocaust survivor Ben Lesser.
I am also the executive director of the Zachor Holocaust Remembrance Foundation.
The past few years my father gave voice to memory.
He spoke to hundreds of thousands of students around the world, including here in Germany.
He shared his story as a young man of 10 years old, when the Nazis came marching into Krakow, how war tore his young world apart.
My family, they lived several years on the run and in hiding, finally making their way to Hungary.
My father was in four concentration camps, a seven-week death march, death trains and this, the most notorious death train of all, that took 794 souls.
They were mothers and fathers, sons and daughters, friends and neighbors, grandparents, playmates.
They had names, dreams and futures that were never realized.
They were taken from this place right here ... and this is why we are here today.
You see, my father walked off of this train in Dachau, one of 18 people to survive out of thousands.
His cousin Isaac was by his side, but tragically Isaac passed away in my dad's arms just hours after liberation.
For about 15 years now, my father was the last living survivor of this death train, and now he is gone.
This is why I am here today, to be the voice for my father.
My dad passed away this last September just days shy of his 97th birthday, and I am here to help keep his voice alive and to help be the voice for those who were silenced.
Dad spoke not only of loss, but of dignity, of humanity and of the responsibility we all carry to remember.
While there is heartbreak for me to be standing here speaking in his place, it is also an honor.
We gather here to remember the almost 800 souls who were taken from this place, where we are standing now.
Their lives interrupted, families shattered, a community forever changed.
But I promise, not forgotten, and this memorial will stand strong for that reason.
We do not stand here for the details of how they were taken from this world, but for who they were in it.
My father believed deeply that remembrance is not passive.
It is an act of courage.
To remember is to say that these lives mattered.
To remember is to ensure that silence never replaces truth.
By speaking their memory, and by committing to never forget, I will pass forward their story of lives taken so frivolously and without regard.
May their memory be a blessing and may we continue to honor them, not only with words, but with how we live, how we treat one another and how we stand against hatred in all its forms, and how we can rebuild by rejecting hate and living a life that matters.
Zachor.
We remember you.
•••
The man who made sure Ben's story was heard in Germany
Standing at the center of this story is Nikolaus Saller, a retired schoolteacher from Fürstenstein who has dedicated decades to ensuring the massacre at Nammering is never forgotten.
Saller first learned of the 1945 killings shortly after he began teaching at the local Volksschule in 1970.
At the time, there was no marker, no sign, nothing to indicate what had happened at the Nammering train station.
In the early 1980s, he helped found a peace forum and worked to place a memorial.
The effort met significant resistance from local residents who feared for their village's reputation and wanted the past left behind.
The memorial was ultimately placed in the forest, hidden from the main path, out of deference to that resistance.
Today, Saller notes, the community's relationship to the memorial has transformed entirely.
Three survivors of the death train came to Nammering over the years to speak at commemorative ceremonies.
All three have since passed away.
When Saller began planning the 2020 commemoration, he searched to see whether any survivor might still be living.
He found Ben Lesser.
Saller had Ben's book sent to him immediately.
The pandemic canceled their planned in-person gathering, but he began writing about Ben's story in the German press, and the two connected through a series of video conferences that drew hundreds of participants.
In 2023, Saller translated Ben's book into German and, together with DGB Niederbayern, had it published by Wallstein Verlag.
He also filed the paperwork for Ben to receive the Federal Cross of Merit, which Ben was awarded by the consul general in Los Angeles.
That same year, Saller sent reading booklets about Ben's story to schools across Germany, fulfilling a wish Ben had expressed.
In June 2025, Ben spoke via the internet to students across Germany, answering their questions in what Saller describes as a great success.
Saller continues to bring Ben's story into German classrooms through his lecture series, "Ben Lesser: Holocaust and Death Train" (www.bensweg.com).
Saller documents the full arc of the transport.
When it stopped in Nammering, the train waited five days on three sidings because the Plattling station had been bombed and the railroad near Tittling was damaged.
It was the prisoners in the rear wagons who were forced out; 794 were murdered there.
Saller describes it as the biggest crime of the Nazis in Lower Bavaria.
It was Saller who extended the invitation to Gail to speak at the 2026 Nammering commemoration.
Ben's voice carries on
Ben Lesser spent the final years of his life speaking to hundreds of thousands of students worldwide.
He believed remembrance was not passive, but required action, courage and the willingness to stand in uncomfortable rooms and tell the truth anyway.
Gail carried that belief with her to Nammering.
She stood at the place where her father's train stopped, beside a memorial that took 40 years and considerable courage to build, and she said his name.
She came to remember the 794.
This column was submitted by the Zachor Foundation, which is based in Las Vegas.
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