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When 81-year-old Laszlo Berkowits recently stood at the entrance of the gas chamber at the infamous Auschwitz death camp complex, it occurred to him this would have been where his mother saw her last bit of sunlight.

“I looked at the sky and it was a strange, strange feeling,” recalled Berkowits, who was a teenager when both his parents died in the German concentration camps.

The Holocaust survivor and author of “The Boy Who Lost His Birthday” will come to Greensboro next weekend to share his personal witness of the worst atrocity against mankind.

“People who survived the Holocaust are well into their 80s — a lot of them have already died,” said Rabbi Fred Guttman of Temple Emanuel, who invited Berkowits to Greensboro for a free public discussion.

“He is amazing and clear,” Guttman said of Berkowits. “He has a lot to say about how he survived Auschwitz and faith in God after an enormous tragedy — a story too few voices are around to tell.”

Berkowits grew up in Derecske, Hungary. Later, his family moved to Budapest where they and other Jews were rounded up by Nazi soldiers.

“I didn’t want to deal with it for a very long time,” said Berkowits, who later immigrated to the United States and is the founding rabbi of Temple Rodef Shalom in Falls Church, Va. “They literally cleaned the area of Jews.”

Berkowits describes being “treated worse than an unwanted caged animal” in a sealed train box car carrying as many people as could be shoved inside.

It was the middle of the summer 1944, and Berkowits was just 16.

Inside the box car they longed for “fresh air, water and the ability to stretch our legs.” At Auschwitz, some were put to work or became part of experiments; others went immediately to the gas chamber. More than 1 million people would die there.

“It was a universe that was created that was totally against everything human that you could imagine,” Berkowits said of the camps. “It was a place to murder people, like a factory — or to process people for slave labor and then work them to death. The end goal was that you should not survive.”

Berkowits’ mother and two younger siblings were sent to the gas chambers upon their arrival.

He, his father and two older sisters were put to work.

Berkowits was 171/2 when soldiers from the 82nd Airborne Division liberated the camp.

He keeps speaking out, especially to young people, because he says they are the future.

“The most important message is that life is sacred and that we should treat human beings in that light,” Berkowits said. “Whether you are a Christian or a Jew, you know the principle that you should love your neighbor as yourself, and the word yourself is important because 'he’ is just like 'you.’”

Yet, unlike those people of faith who question God in such tragedy, Berkowits says he has a different take on atrocities such as the Holocaust.

“I question does God have faith in us,” said Berkowits, who later found his older sisters, who also survived. “God gave us this wonderful talent and ability — free mind and good will — and he has faith that we will do the right thing. It is our job to vindicate God’s faith in us and his creation, and you vindicate God’s faith in us by caring for sanctity of life.”

Contact Nancy McLaughlin at 373-7049 or nancy.mclaughlin@news-record.com