Port Charlotte man discovers his birth in Nazi concentration camp

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The Nazi's Stutthof concentration camp in Poland is seen in a 1941 file photo provided by the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo, Poland. (Credit: CBS News)
The Nazi’s Stutthof concentration camp in Poland is seen in a 1941 file photo provided by the Stutthof Museum in Sztutowo, Poland. (Credit: CBS News)

A Port Charlotte man, who was born in a concentration camp in the Holocaust, continues to grip with the pain of his past as he will soon travel to Germany. Peter Loth will sit in on the trial of one of the Schutzstaffel guards at the Nazi Germany camp where he was born.

The table is scattered with fragments of World War II history. But to Moshe Peter Loth, these are few of the pieces he has uncovered about his life. “If you only knew the time spent finding out the truth,” he said.

Loth’s quest for the truth began in the early 1990s when he was given ashes of his mother and his sister told him she wants to spread them at the death camp where their mom died. “And I was like, ‘what the heck are you talking about death camp?'” Loth said.

Loth told WINK News he never knew he was born at Stutthof, which was a Nazi concentration camp in Poland where nearly 30,000 Jews died. After the war, Loth lived in an orphanage and was reunited with his mother at age 15. Then, he came to the United States alone a year later.

Loth wanted answers, so he enlisted the help of The American Red Cross. A woman for the Red Cross told him to sit down because what the humanitarian organization found was beyond shocking. “She said ‘because you were born in a death camp,'” Loth said. “I just almost passed out.”

The nightmare news changed everything for Loth. His story shows that forgiveness is not easy. Loth had three heart attacks and two strokes that he attributes to the built-up emotion. Later on, Loth knew he had to forgive to let the painful emotions go and that has played a vital role in his healing. “We have to learn how to love and care for one another,” he said.

Loth will sit in on the trial of a 93-year-old former guard from a Nazi concentration camp charged with being an accessory to thousands of murders.

The man, known as “Bruno D,” will face a Hamburg court over the deaths of 5,230 people after he joined the SS as a guard between August 1944 and April 1945.
According to the indictment, the defendant knowingly supported the “insidious and cruel killing” at Stutthof concentration camp, in what is now modern-day Poland.

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