About 600,000 Jews were murdered while at Auschwitz-Birkenau, and by the day of liberation, Gabbai and his cousins were among the small cluster of several thousand survivors. In early January 1945 an order came from Berlin to stop the gassings and the Nazis began blowing up any signs of evidence of the camps. Remaining Jews were led by the Germans on a death march toward Austria. Gabbai recalls that it was snowing, and the temperature was 23 degrees below zero. Those who couldn’t walk were shot. Gabbai recalls that he managed to stay warm by thinking of “Athens in the sunshine.”

Arriving in Austria, the inmates were put to work excavating mines, “lifting 200-pound boulders” with their frail bodies. Gabbai says it was the Germans’ intention to walk Jews into the caves, then blow them up with dynamite. “But they did not have that chance,” he says, briefly closing his eyes. Interned at Ebensee, an Austrian concentration camp, one morning Gabbai awoke one morning to find the camp empty; the Nazi officers had fled. He and inmates rummaged through what little food was left, finding some potatoes. “I boiled the potatoes and ate every hour, on the hour.”

A few months later in May, Gabbai, his two cousins, and the other surviving Jews were liberated– their survival nothing short of a miracle.

Gabbai, 79, a retired textile manager, now lives in Brentwood, where he says he finds catharsis through regular physical exercise, and when speaking with Roth and Petropoulos after class, he is able to laugh and joke about every-day occurrences. He is excited, for instance, about his brand-new e-mail account, and shares the address with CMC students so they can stay in touch.

Gabbai says he was happy to visit the College because he wants younger generations to know what he saw; and never forget what he survived. Ironically, he watches movies about the Holocaust as a way of understanding the motivations behind what occurred. Asked how he felt about Germans today, Gabbai says, “I don’t hate anybody. I can’t. The only thing you can do is communicate, and educate. Nobody knows what tomorrow will bring.”

Before class is dismissed, Professor Petropoulos asks Gabbai how the final solution affected him spiritually. Tragedy has been known to either deepen a person’s faith, or conversely, weaken it.

Gabbai shakes his head at the question. The answer is that watching thousands of Jews die all but crushed his faith in god. “I believe in something, but ---” Gabbai says, his voice trailing.

Looking around at students he quickly adds, “We are on this earth to love each other.”

Dario Gabbai's survival and liberation after the Holocaust was nothing short of a miracle. He is passionate about educating younger generations on the Holcaust. "Life is precious. I want to live as much as I can. We are on this earth to love each other."