“Words cannot describe the horrors and suffering that we went through.”

But Linda Fishman, a Holocaust survivor, and two others expressed in words as best they could their experiences during World War II at a presentation Sunday night titled “Voices of the Holocaust.”

Fishman was the third speaker in the event at the Octagon, 427 Douglas Ave., which also included survivors H.A. David and his wife, Ruth.

David, who lived in a German city when Adolph Hitler came to power in 1933, spoke first and described the historical events relating to the Holocaust.

“It was clear that this regime was anxious to make a deep impression very quickly, and a dictatorship can be extremely effective and efficient in its aims,” he said.

Within four weeks, the 15-year-old democracy was “shoved aside by the Nazis,” he said.

David described the Nuremberg racial laws in 1935, which caused Jews to lose their citizenship. “Jews became aliens in their own country,” he said.

On “Crystal Night,” 20,000 Jewish men were arrested and many people committed suicide or were killed, he said. More than 200 synagogues were destroyed by fire or other means.

“It was a clear forecasting of the Holocaust itself,” he said.

David was able to immigrate to Australia with his parents. However, he lost three grandparents, his mother lost two sisters, and his father lost three siblings in the Holocaust.

His wife, Ruth David, was a child of a Jewish family that had lived in southwest Germany for thousands of years, she said. She lived in a village without many Jewish families.

David said she started school in 1935 and was the only Jewish child in her class. She was told early on that she was not allowed to give the Hitler greeting.

“I was unwanted and I knew this,” she said.

David said after half a year, she and her sister were expelled. They were then sent to a school in a town about 25 miles from their home.

A van picked up the children to drive them to school. “Stones were thrown at our van. We were called the Jewish bus,” she said.

David said it is important to remember that her situation was not the only one of that kind.

“I am not a unique case. What happened to me and my family happened multiplied by thousands of times all over Germany,” she said.

David said she was able to go on her own to England at age 10, but her family couldn’t get out of Germany. They were deported to a concentration camp in the south of France, then to Auschwitz.

“My husband and I are fortunate to have survived,” she said. “Thirteen of every 14 Jewish children in Europe died.”

Fishman, the final speaker, was from Poland and survived six concentration camps.

“As a 13-year-old girl, I witnessed the German invasion of my homeland and the inhumane treatment of my fellow Jews,” she said.

Fishman said she saw her father taken away, followed by her mother a few months later. She and her six siblings lived in the basement of their parents’ house.

She said she was taken away before any of her brothers and sisters. “I never saw my siblings again,” she said.

Fishman was taken to a concentration camp where she worked in a munitions factory. “In this camp, I worked like a horse,” she said.

Fishman saw many people die in front of her from starvation and diseases. She described selections for the gas chambers and seeing people digging their own graves.

“It was hell. Hell is not enough to say,” she said. “People were dying like flies, but somehow I survived.”

Eventually, the Jews were told to try to stay alive because the Americans were coming. “It was the happiest day of our lives,” Fishman said.

She was the only one in her family to survive the Holocaust.

“I lost my whole family and it hurts like hell,” she said.

Fishman said people always ask her if she had lost faith in God.

“It was easy, but even under pressure of hell, no, I did not lose faith in God,” she said. “My faith in God was never compromised.

“I believe that it was an act of God that I survived,” Fishman said. “I speak because in my small way I want to do everything possible to make sure that such a horror will never happen again.”

Steve Burgason, owner of Burgie’s Espresso Cafes, sponsored the event. On Sunday, in the second part of the event at the Octagon, Burgason is bringing in Pastor Jeff Dodge of Cornerstone Church, 315 Sixth St., and Rabbi Yossi Jacobson from Des Moines.