He spent six months building a railway through the Carpathian Mountains on a starvation diet. He fled into a cornfield during an Allied bombing raid. He dodged fascist checkpoints with forged papers tucked under his coat. And now, a century after his birth, he is still here — still speaking, still believing, still insisting that the world must never forget. 

Our community paused this week to celebrate the 100th birthday of Frank Shatz, a remarkable man and a local Holocaust survivor whose story of resistance, survival and hope spans continents, regimes and decades. 

For forty years after the war, he didn't speak about what he had endured. "For me, the past had no meaning," he said. "Only the present and the future." It was only when Holocaust deniers began gaining public platforms that he felt compelled to break that silence. What followed was a decision that would give his later years profound purpose: he became a witness. 

As an inmate in a Nazi slave labor camp, he was forced to help construct a rail line through the rugged terrain of the Carpathian Mountains. The work was brutal. The food was almost nothing. Those who could no longer work were killed or left to die. He survived by using his wits — talking his way into a position as a groom for the camp commandant's horses, a small act of resourcefulness that almost certainly saved his life. 

After six months, he found his opening. During a retreat in front of the advancing Red Army, with an Allied bombing raid providing cover, he slipped away from the camp and disappeared into a nearby cornfield. He made his way to Budapest, wandering the streets "like a hunted animal," Shatz recalled. 

Then came an extraordinary stroke of fortune. By chance, he crossed paths with his brother-in-law, who had himself escaped from a slave labor camp in Serbia and was now operating under false papers for the Zionist underground. His brother-in-law brought him to a safe house established by Raoul Wallenberg — the legendary Swedish diplomat who saved tens of thousands of Hungarian Jews through an audacious campaign of protective passports and safe houses. 

He stayed only a few days before plunging deeper into the resistance. Equipped with a fake identity, he became a courier for the anti-Nazi underground. For six months, he moved through a city crawling with SS officers and fascist militias, delivering forged documents to Jewish families facing deportation to Auschwitz under the orders of SS Colonel Adolf Eichmann. It was extraordinarily dangerous work, and he did it voluntarily, for others. 

Liberation did not immediately bring freedom. After the war, Shatz spent nearly a decade living under a repressive Communist regime in Czechoslovakia — trading one form of tyranny for another. It was not until 1958 that he and his wife finally arrived in the United States as refugees, beginning the chapter of their lives that would eventually take root in this community.   

Williamsburg has been his home for the past 46 years. Through his eloquent writings, Shatz has celebrated the city’s historic charm and vibrant community. He served as an international affairs columnist for the Virginia Gazette for thirty-eight years.   

At his centennial celebration, surrounded by family, community leaders and members of the community he has called home, he remained sharp and warm, a living rebuttal to every attempt to erase or deny what he experienced.