Holocaust survivor Boris Kotler recounted his experiences living through World War II in occupied Poland at Hillel Saturday.

Kotler spoke at Hillel’s Shabbat lunch. Hillel Leadership Council Social Justice Vice President junior Dora Schoenberg said Boris’s grandson, freshman Tyler Kotler, had the idea to bring his grandfather to campus after seeing a Holocaust survivor speak in the fall.

“I love hearing all the stories, because not any one is the same,” Schoenberg said. “I think it’s so important to continue hearing Holocaust survivors’ stories, because soon we’re not going to be able to hear from the survivors themselves.”

Kotler was born in a small Polish town of 5,000 Jewish people and 6,000 Christians. Once Germany’s extermination effort stretched its tendrils into Poland, Kotler evaded hostile forces by living in a forest alone, starting at the age of 12. He said he would sneak out to ask local farmers for food but never dared to venture into the nearby town.

“Some [farmers] would say, ‘We don’t have enough food; we need to feed the animals.’…But even just a piece of bread helped,” Kotler said.

When asked what got him through his years of solitude in the forest, Kotler was frank.

“I think that’s how I am,” Kotler said. “I’m not afraid of anything.”

Kotler eventually holed up with a group who fought off potential captors in heated firefights.

“I could not use the machine gun because it was too heavy, but there was a fellow who had been in the Polish army who knew how to…The rest of us fought them off with rifles and grenades,” Kotler said.

Once the war ended, Kotler made money smuggling cigarettes into Germany, specifically into the northern region where they were in much higher demand. Kotler reunited with his mother and sister before making his way to America. He settled in New York City, where he had to adjust to the bustle of a metropolis.

“I remember when I saw the West Side highway for the first time from the Port of New York,” Kotler said. “There were so many cars going back and forth. For the first few nights I thought it was an automobile factory.”

Kotler started work at a stroller factory before entering the auto business. There he prospered, eventually co-owning two dealerships, a Ford and a Chevrolet. He used his discount to make sure everyone in his family drove a Chevrolet.

Kotler teared up several times when telling his story, which he says he does “all the time,” particularly when talking about his father, whom he saw for the last time before the war. Tyler, Kotler’s grandson, says while nothing he heard was new, his grandfather doesn’t often tell his story in public.

“That’s why I got him to talk about the smuggling, to end it on a lighter note,” Kotler’s grandson said.

Kotler says he came to Hillel to share his story so that younger people can appreciate how harrowing the time was.

“I want the younger generation to know what it was like,” Kotler said. “It’s one thing to read it in a book, but in person…it’s different.”