Students at The Webb School received a powerful lesson in resilience and history on Monday, September 8, when Ken Gluck, education coordinator for the Tennessee Holocaust Commission, shared the story of his late father, Armin Gluck — a Holocaust survivor.

Armin was one of nine children from Tornyospálca, Hungary. He was separated from his siblings, pulled out of school by the Nazis, and drafted to perform forced labor repairing roads and runways for the Hungarian Army while in the eighth grade. In 1945, he completed the 300-mile Death March across Hungary and through the Austrian Alps to the Mauthausen Concentration Camp in a German-annexed Austria. Among the 38% who survived the trek, Armin was met with even more turmoil and despair upon his arrival.

Determined to survive, he became a cook and a baker at the camp, risking his own life to sneak food to the many malnourished women, children, and men held there. When the war had finally ended and the concentration camps were liberated, all but Armin’s youngest brother had miraculously survived — five of the siblings enduring time in concentration camps. 

As his son, Ken, recounted on the later life of Armin Gluck, who married, had two children, opened a restaurant in Vermont, and passed away peacefully at the age of 93, he ended with an important reminder to students about resiliency: 

“Whatever you encounter in life, these challenges should not define you. They should not limit you. They should inspire you to succeed.”

Established by the Tennessee legislature in 1984, the Tennessee Holocaust Commission is dedicated to education and remembrance. The Webb School is grateful to Ken Gluck and the Commission for helping our students engage with this critical piece of world history and its lessons for the future.