Meet the Mayo Clinic cleaner with a secret: He's an Auschwitz Holocaust survivor
Tucked in the basement of the Mayo Clinic is a man who has witnessed unimaginable evil yet exudes unspeakable joy: "I remember everything."
ROCHESTER, Minnesota — “I remember everything.”
Those are the three words that have stuck with me the most since meeting 86-year-old Kurt Glover-Ettrich. Three words that say so much. That speak of inexplicable pain, hurt, and torture. Of evil.
Kurt is a survivor of both the Auschwitz and Dachau concentration camps, but I didn’t know that when I first met him. Most people don’t. That’s because the man who experienced so much tragedy serves as a part-time cleaner and part-time volunteer in the basement of the Mayo Clinic. He runs food, greets people, and picks up trash. He’s also the happiest person I have ever met. Joy leaps out of him like hot kernels in a popcorn machine. His face is the epitome of hope. How and why? Well, that’s a big part of his story.
That story is of a Holocaust survivor who witnessed unimaginable evil that he’s still finding words to express. The story of a man, so grateful for an America that liberated him from Hitler’s cruelty, he joined the Green Berets and served the country that gave so much to free him. The story of a man still battling cancer but choosing joy every minute of every day. The story of a survivor whose life calling is to bring light to the darkness out of gratitude to a God that miraculously rescued him.
It’s a story that has to be told. That has to be remembered. And it’s a story I’m honored to bring you now.
I met Kurt by accident, really. During one of our first days here at the Mayo Clinic in Minnesota to get to the bottom of my wife’s health issues, it was hard to miss him. He glides across the room, song in his mouth and cleaning bottle in hand, wearing his black Mayo-issued beret slightly cocked to the side as if it were part of a military uniform. He works as a cafeteria attendant at Mayo every weekday morning.
As my wife sat near a large pole early on during our 10-day stay at the clinic, he belted heartily, “Oh look! God sent an angel to hold up the pillar of the hospital!”
My wife smiled. I smiled. He smiled. Later that day, I made a point to take a picture with him. I just had to document a man so joyful. He was special, although I didn’t know how special at the time. However, he refused to let me take a picture of just him.
“Let’s make it a selfie,” he said with a big smile. I detected a slight accent. But given that we’re in Minnesota, I pegged it as something Scandinavian.
As this week progressed, we saw Kurt every morning. And every morning he was just as happy as the previous one. In general, everyone at Mayo is kind. It’s as if humanity’s rainbow starts here. But Kurt? He’s more kind, more joyful, more everything than everyone else.
Then came this morning.
Today, my wife and I had our earliest appointment of the week. Her first test was slated for 6:45am. We woke up early, went to her scan, and then headed to the cafeteria for some coffee as we waited for her next consultation. As I opened my computer and started sipping my coffee, it wasn’t long before I sensed Kurt’s joyful aura and singing behind me.
That’s when I felt something stir inside me. Talk to him, the voice said. I’ve learned — especially recently — who and what that voice is, and I wasn’t about to tell God, “no.”
“Kurt, can I get a picture of you with my wife this time?” I asked.
“Oh, it’s my angel!” he said, referencing my wife. He came over and started singing to her as he posed for me. I snapped two pictures.
We laughed. We smiled. But we weren’t done.
Ask him how long he’s worked here, the voice told me. So I did.
“Oh, about 18 months,” he said.
“So why are you so happy?” I asked, smiling because you can’t help but smile while talking to Kurt.
“Because it’s my purpose in life. So many people here [at Mayo] are going through so much. It gives me joy to bring them joy,” he responded matter-of-factly.
In fact, Kurt is so dedicated to his calling that he works in the cafeteria in the mornings and then volunteers at the neighboring information desk in the afternoons. He tried to volunteer in the cafeteria in the afternoons as well, but Mayo policy wouldn’t allow him to volunteer at the same place he worked, he explained. So he picked the next closest place just steps away from where he spreads joy and hope every morning.
From there, he became an open book. He began telling us his life story.
“I served for 34 years in the special forces as a Green Beret,” he said. My eyes got big. It now made sense why he wore his hat the way he did. It’s as if he was still in uniform. After serving and living on the East Coast, a friend of his said she was moving to Rochester because she got a job at Mayo. He decided to join her.
Before I could ask why he followed her here, we were interrupted. A woman sitting behind us started sneezing.
“Gesundheit!” he exclaimed. Twice.
As soon as he said it, I froze inside. I knew it instantly. His accent wasn’t Scandinavian at all. It was German. How did I know? Because as soon as the word left his mouth it’s as if I was sitting at my grandfather’s kitchen table, listening to him talk in heavily-accented English while dipping in and out of German. My “Grandpa Frank,” as we called him, was born in Germany and immigrated to the United States before WWII. Kurt sounded exactly like him.
“Kurt, are you German?” I asked slowly, already knowing the answer.
“Ja,” he said.
Kurt Glover-Ettrich was born in 1938 in Stimmersdorf, a town in the Nazi-occupied area of what was then Czechoslovakia.
“I’m German, but the Czech Republic has my heart,” he said with pride. But as he started to rattle off details of his birth, I wasn’t prepared for what he said next.
“I grew up in the camps,” he explained.
“Wait,” I stopped him, “the concentration camps?” I paused, “Kurt, are you a holocaust survivor?”
“Ja. Both Auschwitz and Dachau,” he said solemnly, the first time I saw a man with so much joy change his facial expression to anything but happy.
That’s when the story took on new meaning.
While a young boy, his father was conscripted into the Nazi army and forced to fight on the Eastern Front against the Russians. It’s a story I know all too well: my great uncle, who is also from a similar area near the German-Czech border, was conscripted and forced to fight for the Nazis against Russia, too. He died on the battlefield, a complex pain my grandfather lived with for his entire life.
As for Kurt and his mother, they were rounded up and sent to a concentration camp. His mother’s name? Esther. And with a name like that, it’s not hard to imagine why.
"The one soldier said, 'Leutnant, ich habe zwei Juden hier.’ Lieutenant, I've got two Jews here. And we were sent to Auschwitz," Kurt recalled in a story I found after doing some more research.
"The one soldier said, 'Leutnant, ich habe zwei Juden hier.’ Lieutenant, I've got two Jews here. And we were sent to Auschwitz."
Tears began welling up in my eyes. I was in the presence of someone who had survived inexplicable evil and suffering. Someone who grew up around death. I have a 5-year-old and an 8-year-old myself. I tried imagining them sitting in a concentration camp like Kurt. I couldn’t.
“Do you… do you have the tattoo?” I asked.
He began rolling up his sleeve. Quickly, the faded ink peeked through. “I was five or six,” he said.
I looked over at my wife, who had tears in her eyes. I asked him if I could take a picture, wanting to capture this moment forever. He agreed.
He continued.
“In 1945, we could hear the allies coming [near the camp]. We heard the gunfire. That’s when the Germans told us to get on the transport. We didn’t know it, but they were sending us to an extermination camp in Poland.”
That’s when the miracle happened.
“Whether it was an accident, an act of sabotage, or divine intervention, the train derailed,” he explained.
He then paused, looked and pointed up, and made it clear what conclusion he had drawn: “He saved me.”
That’s not the end of the story, though. After the train derailment, Kurt and his mother ran. And ran. And ran some more, until they couldn’t hear the gunfire or the dogs.
“We lived off the land,” he said. For 16 weeks, they did whatever they could to survive until they found their way home.
But at home, something was still missing: his father. Statistics tell us what most likely happened. Death numbers vary, but millions of Nazi soldiers died fighting the Soviets, including those conscripted from areas like Czechoslovakia.
Kurt and his mother, however, never gave up hope, a characteristic he displays to this day as he greets strangers in the basement of the Mayo Clinic. For four years, from 1945-1949, they checked the train station as POWs returned from the Soviet Union. Four years.
Nothing.
Then came Hanukkah 1949.
“It was the worst, coldest winter ever recorded,” he recalled. “As we were leaving we heard a faint voice from behind us: 'Esther, bist du das?’ (Esther is that you?) We turned around, and it was my father."
By this point, my wife and I were in full tears. We couldn’t believe our eyes. Our ears. I paused again, careful how I crafted my next question.
“Do you remember the camps?” I asked softly.
He lowered his head: “I remember everything.” Then silence. No follow-up question was needed or appropriate. I took my glasses off and physically wiped the tears from my eyes.
“I’m still finding the words to describe what happened.”
“I’m still finding the words to describe what happened,” he explained after a pause. In fact, he said, he used to regularly meet with fifth, sixth, and seventh-graders to talk about his experience. Several years ago he had to stop. He was breaking down and sobbing too much.
“I haven’t done it since,” he said.
After the liberation of Europe and the return of his father from the Soviet POW camp, Kurt and his family immigrated to the United States around 1956. There was no question what he wanted to do once he became an American citizen.
“I signed up for the Army as soon as I could,” he said. “I wanted to give back to the country that had given me so much.”
“It was the only way I could thank this great country called the United States of America and the American people for having allowed me to come here," he added.
Not surprisingly, a man of his strength, grit, and determination found his way to the special forces as a Green Beret. He served his new country for over 30 years, supporting freedom and fighting evil.
That wasn’t his only battle, though. For 24 years he’s also been battling prostate cancer. In fact, that battle is what first introduced him to Mayo. He’s been receiving treatment here over that entire span.
“I’m still battling it,” he told me.
You’d never know it. A man who has seen so much evil, experienced so much pain, is a beacon of hope to strangers facing their own battles. It’s his calling. His purpose. And it’s obvious.
I asked him what his advice is for staying so joyful.
“I’ll tell ya, it’s three things,” he said. “Have a positive attitude, keep sunshine in your heart, and use the gray matter God put between your ears.”
It’s those three things he told me to tell you. Simple. Profound. But not necessarily easy.
Near the end of our conversation, I told Kurt I was a writer and was going to tell the world about him. He chuckled. People have tried to get him to write a book, he said, but he’s not interested. He’d rather bring joy to people at the Mayo Clinic than talk about himself. But the world needs to know about him.
After my wife’s appointments concluded for the day, I did some research on Kurt in preparation for this piece. Some of the details I’ve found differ slightly from what he told me. For example, one local article says he was born in 1943, while he told me he was born in 1938. That’s not odd to me. Trauma like he experienced can make early memories fuzzy. The Nazis were working hard to wipe out any trace of the Jews, meaning things like birth certificates and vital records weren’t exactly preserved.
Another slight discrepancy: he told me it was him, his mother, and his brother in the camps. But in other accounts he only talked about him and his mother. I’m afraid to ask for clarification because I’m afraid of the answer he will give me.
In the end, those slight variations don’t bother me. I don’t think they will bother you, either, because Kurt’s story — the one he tells and the one he lived — remains powerful either way. And the tattoo on his forearm bears witness.
I’ve thought all day about what the lesson of Kurt’s story is. I don’t think there’s one thing. It’s multifaceted:
It’s about joy — not just happiness — despite your circumstances.
It’s about finding your purpose in something, and someone, greater than yourself (Kurt’s faith is evident, and he mentioned it several times).
It’s about resilience.
It’s about sacrifice and giving back.
And it’s about being willing to confront evil. No matter where it’s happening and why.
It’s that last one that I feel compelled to add to, though. The others are self-explanatory.
While I spent years in the news business and writing about politics, I’ve sworn that off. There’s too much else to focus on that matters more. In general, this space is reserved for faith, so what I’m about to say is as political as I’ll get. But here it is: I subscribe to the idea, like John Quincy Adams, that America should not go “in search of monsters to destroy.” In other words, America should not be looking for fights or to start them.
But when those monsters reveal themselves? When they aren’t afraid — and are even emboldened — to show themselves? They must be defeated. Their evil must be stamped out and decimated. The innocent must be protected.
Why do I think that? Because a man who saw evil in the most vivid way made confronting that evil his life goal once he survived it. He gave over 30 years of his life to that mission. That tells me something.
It should tell all of us something.
Note: I’ve included some quotes in this piece from interviews Kurt gave previously that I was able to find. He told us the same things, but where it was more succinct or made sense I used the earlier interviews or combined what he told us with what he told others. I’ve included links where necessary.
I've met Kurt. He is a survivor. His military service is equally important and interesting as what happened to him in the camps. You really need to go further. Kurt's story really needs to be told. He is a blessing and inspiration to us all.
We met Kurt yesterday while at Mayo and he made an unbelievable impression on us as well. So much, that we couldn't stop thinking about him and our conversation so my son Googled and found him and some other articles. We will have many trips to Mayo in our future and look forward to talking with him and somehow thanking him for the incredible impact he has made on so many. My 18 year old was with us yesterday and just sent me this article.....said he couldn't stop thinking about Kurt. Thank you for publishing this article...