“I will speak about this until I die. If we forget what happened, it will happen again,” said Dave Tuck of Levittown, who spent two years in a Nazi concentration camp. There was music playing at Auschwitz on that August day in 1943. Dave Tuck, a Jewish teenager, thought, “It’s not going to be too bad.” He had already spent two years in a hard labor camp, barely surviving on a twice-daily ration of a slice of bread and sips of coffee. He weighed 78 pounds. But as he stood there, he saw German soldiers separating men from women and children. “One way meant you were slave labor, the other meant death and the crematoriums,” said Tuck, a Holocaust survivor who lives in Levittown. He stopped speaking. His living room was silent. After a moment, he said, “I will speak about this until I die. If we forget what happened, it will happen again. Last time it was me. But who will be the victims next time?”Jan. 27, 1945, is a date he recalls the way the rest of us recall our birthdays or anniversaries. Auschwitz was liberated, the largest and most deadly camp in a web of machinery that killed Europe’s Jews on an industrialized scale in the millions. The numbers horrify. “The Polish population, it had 34 million,” Tuck said. “Ten percent of the population was Jewish — 3,400,000. Three million two hundred thousand didn’t make it. For every 10 Jews, nine didn’t make it.” He was 10 years old on Sept. 1, 1939, when Germany invaded his homeland of Poland. He had no idea what was coming. “I got up, turned on the radio to listen to music, and all they kept playing was ‘Deutschland Uber Alles,” or ‘Germany Overall,’” he said. “I lived in a town where there were only 18 Jewish families. They gave us to wear a yellow armband, on the left arm. Then they gave us a Star of David, one on the front, one on the back,” he said. The invasion started World War II. His mother had died when he was 6 months old. His father had left him. Tuck was raised by his orthodox grandparents in Jarocin, a small town on the German border. When the Nazis arrived, he was sent to the Lodz ghetto, where he spent a year. Then to Posen, a labor camp in Poland, where he lied about his age, saying he was 15. “Why did I say 15? Because at 10, I have no right to live. At 15, I could work,” he said. He gave out ration cards in an office. He received twice-daily rations of a slice of bread and sips of coffee. “That was it,” he said. He was reassigned to collect trash. He was ordered to round up 10 boys to help. Starving, three of them ran away, knocking on doors seeking food. They were caught. In a soccer stadium, the Nazis built three gallows, each with a chair. “They brought those three boys in and put them in chairs, put the noose around their neck. And the stadium is full with civilians,” he said. The gallows opened, and the three boys dropped through, still seated on the chairs. “The SS man, he turns around and says, ‘They didn’t obey orders. If you don’t obey orders, this is what happens to you.’ I still can see it.” In August 1943, he was sent to Auschwitz, where those chosen as labor were tattooed with a number, since tattoos made it easier for the Germans to identify corpses. “I still have a number from Auschwitz,” Tuck said. “I don’t know if people know about it -- only Auschwitz gave tattoos. Only Auschwitz gave the blue-and-white outfit. No other.” He rolled up his sleeve and showed me the number on his left forearm: 141631. From there he was sent to an Auschwitz sub-camp, Eintrachthutte, where he built anti-aircraft guns. Then he was sent to Mauthausen in Austria, then to Guzen II, an underground factory where the Germans built Stuka aircraft. All that time, there were no newspapers or radios. “I didn’t even know what was going on in the world,” he said. He thought he would die of starvation. “Every morning, every night, I went to sleep, I’d say, ’Please, God, let me see the light the next day.’ I thought every day was the last day,” he said. On May 5, 1945, American soldiers liberated Gusen II. “I was 15 years old and weighed 78 pounds,” he said. After the war, he met his future wife, Marie, also a Holocaust survivor. They went to Italy, then to France, then to Germany, where they married. In 1950 they immigrated to the U.S.He made his living at a men’s clothing factory, then on his own selling interior decor, first in Brooklyn, then in Burlington. He later moved his business to Feasterville in Bucks County. He didn’t speak about his experiences during the Holocaust until 1979. In that time, he estimates he has spoken to tens of thousands of schoolchildren, warning them. “Whoever they are, they have to know that they could be next. This I will tell them until I can’t anymore. I have faith they will hear my story, and remember, and tell their kids, too,” he said. Columnist JD Mullane can be reached at 215-949-5745 or at firstname.lastname@example.org.