Most people don't realize it lasted years and years and years without let up.

— Louis Koplin

Biography

Louis Koplin (born Ludwig Kopolowitz) was born in Nelipeno, Czechoslovakia (now in the Ukraine), on July 30, 1920. He came from a family of Orthodox Jews who had lived in an area known as Subcarpathian Ruthenia for hundreds of years. Louis graduated from the Munkacs Gymnasium in 1941, two years after the German-sympathizing Hungarian government occupied Subcarpathia.

Although the Hungarian government did not persecute the Jews until the spring of 1944, Jewish men were sent to the Russian front beginning in June 1941 to mine and dig trenches. Louis was sent to a labor camp in Komarom, Hungary. He was chosen from among 2,000 men to remain there as a shoemaker. The others were never heard from again.

Louis remained in Komarom until March 1944, when the Hungarians abandoned the camp after the Nazis invaded Hungary. Louis was rounded up and sent to the Austrian border, where he worked in a forced labor camp until February 1945. He was then force-marched with thousands of others for more than 300 miles to the concentration camp of Mauthausen. More than 95 percent of the prisoners died en route. Soon afterward the Nazi guards fled the camp, leaving the inmates on their own until they were liberated by the advancing U.S. Army several days later.

Upon his arrival at a displaced persons camp in Germany, Louis was hired by the American Jewish Joint Distribution Committee (JDC) to help resettle refugees throughout Europe. Through the JDC, he was accepted at the University of Wisconsin - Madison, where he arrived in September 1947. Louis studied pharmacy and moved to Milwaukee after graduating. Louis married in 1954, opened a pharmacy in 1957, and raised three children. Louis retired in 1992.

Pictures

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