Remembering Sandor Teszler, a Hungarian Holocaust Survivor and Lifelong Learner

By: Aparna Priyadarshi

The remarkable life and times of a Hungarian Holocaust survivor who reminds us to not give up in finding goodness in people and to never stop learning.

Source: Wofford College Archives

Sandor Teszler at Wofford College, Spartanburg, South Carolina.

Who was the lifelong learner? His name was Sandor Teszler, a Holocaust survivor who overcame immeasurable odds to come to the United States in search of peace, refuge, and an intellectually enlightened life.

Born in Budapest in 1903, Teszler received his degree in textile engineering and founded his own series of textile mills in what is now the former Yugoslavia. One day in one of his plants, a worker was caught stealing hosiery, and Teszler faced the daunting task of incriminating the man or letting him off. He pleadingly asked him, “Why do you steal from me? If you need money, you need only ask.” He let the man go, and reassured his angered guardsmen, telling them, “It’s okay, he will not steal again.”

* * *

Years later, after the Nazi occupation of Yugoslavia had been well underway, Sandor Teszler and his family were captured and placed in a death house, where Jews were beaten and killed before ruthlessly being thrown into the Danube River. One day, Teszler and his family were taken out to the edge of the Danube, where they suffered a merciless beating. In a seemingly sick twist of fate, one of the overseers of the death house was none other than the hosiery thief! Before their impending capture and imprisonment, Teszler and his family had begun wearing cyanide capsules in lockets around their necks, in the hopeless event they would ever need them. In this moment, they felt that it was the end for them and were prepared to end their misery. In a true display of serendipity, the guard leaned down and whispered to Teszler, “Don’t take the capsule. Help is on the way.”

Soon enough, Teszler and his family were escorted to safety by members of the Swiss consul and reclassified as Yugoslav citizens. Not long after, they immigrated to the U.S., where they eventually settled down in Spartanburg, South Carolina. Doing what he did best, Mr. Teszler opened a textile mill in the region. But this was no ordinary mill. 

* * *

At the time, which by then was sometime in the late ‘50s, Spartanburg, South Carolina was one of the most racially segregated towns in the country, rife with white supremacist resentment, from the common white southerner to Klansmen of the Ku Klux Klan. But Teszler was well aware of the apartheid system of Jim Crow; after all, he was no stranger to a story of this kind. He deliberately settled in this segregated place to prove that his integrated mill would not only thrive and prosper just fine, but far surpass the performance of any segregated mill. Surely by no fluke, Mr. Teszler’s plant — the first racially integrated textile mill in the region — did just that.

“I rented an empty store in King’s Mountain and engaged an English mechanic to put in six machines. When everything was ready, I brought in eight black and eight white workers. These sixteen workers worked together in three shifts until they had become good friends. They used the same bathroom, drank from the same water fountain and ate together as in the main plant…I opened with only one water fountain and restroom for all.” — Sandor Teszler

* * *

Not long after Teszler’s wife and children had passed away and he had entered into retirement, he took interest in the small college nearby, Wofford College. There, he quickly became known as an avid learner, and audited over 50 classes. He particularly enjoyed classes in the humanities, philosophy, art, and history. He had a love of the opera, with a particular fondness of compositions by fellow Hungarian composer, Béla Bartók.

Recounting his eagerness for learning, Teszler said:

“Every day I go to the library for two or three hours and I see my dear friend, Mr. Coburn, who is head of the library now. And he does everything to help me to get the books that I need and want to read. I am able to get over my loneliness because I am still able to read books — not novels or light reading, but biographies and history books.

….I am still involved in the Holocaust, studying and reading very often about this tragedy. In my heart and in my life, I suffered very much, losing all my family. It was an unbelievable fate that I could escape.”

Despite having endured unspeakable tragedy throughout his life, experiencing and witnessing the worst instances of mankind’s infliction of injustice onto others, Mr. Teszler was known for not losing faith in his fellow humans:

“Not long before Mr. Teszler’s own death at the age of 97, he heard me hold forth on human iniquity. I delivered a lecture in which I described history as, on the whole, a tidal wave of human suffering and brutality, and Mr. Teszler came up to me afterwards with gentle reproach and said, ‘You know, Doctor, human beings are fundamentally good.’ And I made a vow to myself, then and there, that if this man who had such cause to think otherwise had reached that conclusion, I would not presume to differ until he released me from my vow.”— former President of Wofford College Dr. Bernie Dunlap

I revisit this story often. Apart from it being a remarkable story in its own right, I am fascinated by this man — a Holocaust survivor — and his unwillingness to give up on humanity. I have not experienced 1/1000th of what he endured in what was a fraction of his life, and yet I find myself increasingly disheartened by this duality of extreme wickedness and extreme suffering of people. It is often difficult to believe in the notion that humans are “fundamentally good” when there is so much iniquity and hatred reverberating throughout the world, which feels particularly heightened in this era of human history. But it is clear as ever that if this man was able to find goodness in people, just as he did in the hosiery thief and the mill workers of King’s Mountain, then surely I — we — might be able to do the same. I am also in admiration of his passion for learning. I remember this man not only as a Holocaust survivor who unapologetically fought racial segregation at one of its starkest points but also as an eternal student. I wonder if this is also how he might have liked to have been remembered, not only by his many trials or successes but by his genuine curiosity in exploring anything and everything in which he found a peculiar interest.

After having lived a life of inexplicable pain, intellectual enlightenment, and steadfast pursuit of racial justice in his new homeland, Sandor Teszler died at the impressive age of 97 in the year 2000.

By consciously remembering and continuously reviving stories like his, we can ensure that the fearless iconoclasts who came before us can live on.

Aparna Priyadarshi is a second-year MIA student concentrating in Economic & Political Development with a specialization in Data & Quantitative Analysis. Outside of her studies at SIPA, she enjoys studying the history of WWII and racial injustice in America. 

Sources: Memoirs of Sandor Teszler, archived by Wofford College’s Sandor Teszler Library; 2007 Ted talk by the former president of Wofford College, Dr. Benjamin Dunlap, on Teszler’s life, titled “The Lifelong Learner” (my initial introduction to this story, whereby I have named my memoir piece)