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Steen Metz

A Holocaust Survivor Speaks

Steen Metz, who was 8 when he and his family were sent to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp in 1943, joins us to share his story of survival. (In person)

On October 2, 1943, Steen Metz and his parents were arrested and deported to the Theresienstadt Concentration Camp from his childhood home in Odense, Denmark. He was only eight years old. This Nazi facility was the scene of constant hunger, brutal living conditions, and death.  Some 15,000 children passed through Theresienstadt. Steen is one of fewer than 1,500 who survived.

His father died of starvation and hard labor after less than six months in the camp.

Steen and his mother spent a total of eighteen months in Theresienstadt.  They were liberated on April 15, 1945 by the Red Cross "White Buses" -  just one month prior to the scheduled launch of the camp's newly installed gas chamber.

They returned to Odense, Denmark, where Steen completed high school and business college in Copenhagen.

Steen started his career in the food industry in Denmark, which later took him to England and then Canada. It was in Toronto that Steen met and married his wife.  They moved to the U.S. in 1962, and raised their two daughters in Deerfield, Illinois. 

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