The Desert Holocaust Memorial is ringed by 11 bronze friezes that depict the annihilation of Europe's Jews. One frieze shows the Warsaw ghetto uprising and bears a sign that reads: "Let us not go to slaughter like sheep." Another frieze depicts the sleeping quarters that housed the 1.5 million Jewish children sent to the gas chambers.

On a warm, windy afternoon, Earl Greif visits the memorial in Palm Desert's Civic Park. A retired real estate developer and manager, Greif co-founded the memorial in 1995 and raised much of the nearly $500,000 necessary to erect it.

"That's Joseph Mengele," Greif says, his eyes widening for a moment to consider the cruel face of the notorious Nazi doctor who decided who lived and who died at Auschwitz. "The ones who were too old or too little went to the gas chambers. The ones who were strong went to the slave camps. And the crematoriums were burning 24 hours a day."

Greif stops next to a marble pedestal.

"Buried here are the names of 12,000 Christians who risked their lives to save Jews," Greif says, lowering his head. And, as if anyone might doubt thenumber's authenticity, he adds: "Those names were all verified by the state of Israel."

Greif, 75, is short and solidly built and retains a thick head of gray hair. In the desert, he's known for being a philanthropist, a tireless activist in all kinds of Jewish charities. But it's his identity as a Holocaust survivor that has marked him, made him who he is today.

"After the war, when I came to America, I had nightmares and couldn't sleep," he says, sitting in the den of his spacious house in Rancho Mirage. "So I decided to bury all my memories in 1954. From then on, I never talked to anyone, my wife or my children, about what happened during the war. But in the early 1980s, I saw a TV show with two skinheads being interviewed. These skinheads said there was no Holocaust, no gas chambers, no crematoriums. I couldn't believe what I heard. That's when I broke my silence."

For Greif -- the name rhymes with life -- as with many survivors, the need to bear witness transcends whatever anguish comes with it. And the denial of the Holocaust's historical reality, in Europe and America, has only fueled that need. Today he speaks at length about how he and his brother, Yehuda, managed to outlive the Third Reich.

Before the war

Born in 1925, Greif is second eldest of Isaac and Miriam Greif's four children. The family was poor and grew up on a farm near the Polish village of Chlopczice, about 50 miles from the German border.

"It was a primitive village, with no electricity, no running water, no gas," says Greif. "We had cows, horses and grew vegetables and fruits, which had to last us through the year, because there were no stores."

Even before Hitler's rise to power, life was miserable for Jews in Eastern Europe. Antisemitism, fanned into periodic waves of virulent hatred, was a regular feature of Polish life. The Greifs, one of only 14 Jewish families in a town of no more than 300 families, learned to endure persecution.

"They persecuted us for one principal reason: The Christian children were taught that the Jews were the ones who killed Christ. The Romans killed Christ, not the Jews," Greif says.

Teachers launched into Christian prayers every morning at school. The Jewish children stood, but did not recite the prayers.

"And when the Christian kids saw that we didn't, they would ridicule us and then beat us up -- punch us, kick us. It was a miserable existence, and this is the way it was from the first grade to the seventh grade, when the war broke out."

In 1930s, rural Poland news traveled slowly if at all. There were no TVs, no radios, no reliable newspapers. Stories about Jews being beaten reached Chlopczice as rumors. But the adolescent Greif couldn't help wondering about what he heard.

"We had heard . . . that the Germans were arresting Jews, burning synagogues and destroying businesses. . . . It was hard to believe it was happening. It didn't make sense. Why would any government arrest Jews and burn their synagogues and kill them for no reason?"

Target practice

The Nazis had already spelled out their reasons. A wave of anti-Jewish legislation between 1933 and 1935 had legitimized antisemitism. In "Mein Kampf," Hitler had urged the extermination of the Jewish race. But this news didn't reach the Greif's isolated village. When Germany attacked Poland in September of 1939, it was too late to escape.

Hitler's plan was to segregate Poland's 3.3. million Jews into specific neighborhoods and then, with the population thoroughly isolated, destroy them. But in the first couple of weeks after the invasion, Greif remembers, there were no arrests in his village. Instead, local Polish hate groups began rounding up Jews and killing them.

The Greifs fled to nearby Rudki where an uncle, Hersh Schreiber, lived. But within a week they returned to the farm. Russia, which had signed a non-aggression pact with Germany, had taken control of nearly half of Poland, including Chlopczice.

Attacks on Jews temporarily subsided. But the reprieve was short-lived. In his mania to create a Thousand Year Reich, Hitler expanded the war. When he attacked Russia in 1941, the fate of Poland's Jews was sealed.

"When the Nazis attacked Russia and recaptured our town, that's when the killing really began," says Greif. "I remember a beautiful young Jewish couple stumbled into our town carrying a little infant. They came to our front door begging us to let them stay overnight.

"My father took them in. But late that night, some armed men came to our house. The men said, `We understand you have a Jewish couple staying at your house.' My father explained that they were just spending the night as guests, but the men said we had to give them up. We could do nothing, because they had weapons.

"We watched them walk (the young family) across the street toward a river. And short while later we heard a gun shot.

"The next day our neighbors told us what these men had done. On a cliff overlooking the river they tied the couple's arms together. One of the men took their baby and threw it up in the air while the other shot the child as it fell into the river. They were using the baby for target practice. And the couple -- they pushed them into the river."

Family of refugees

When Isaac Greif heard what had befallen the Jewish couple he acted quickly. Leaving Poland was impossible; the borders were sealed. Perhaps in a larger city, he thought, the family would be safer. The family again fled to Rudki.

They went through heavily wooded areas so no one would see them. But the Nazis were flooding into Rudki, too. Synagogues were being burned, and Jews were being killed at will.

Gestapo officers demanded jewelry and money from the Jewish family living in the apartment next to Greif's uncle. When the couple said they had nothing to give, the officers threatened to punish them.

"The couple thought it was a joke, because it was obvious they were poor. But five days later, those same officers did come back. And when the couple didn't have the items, they grabbed their baby girl. The apartment was on the second floor, and the Gestapo took that baby and threw it out the window."

Fearing for their lives, Isaac and Miriam decided the family would hide in the forest. They had no time to get their eldest child, Rozia, who was studying in another town; she would have to fend for herself. Isaac, 39; Miriam, 37; Earl, 15; Yehuda, 9; and Devorah, 2, fled to the woods.

"It was deep, deep forest. You couldn't see anyone walking even 10 feet away. And we never stayed in one area for more than a day," Greif says. Two weeks after the Greifs fled to the forest, the Nazis began taking Jewish men and teen-age boys to the concentration camps.

"We ate mushrooms, berries, birds' eggs. We slept on leaves that we pushed together and hid inside for warmth," Greif says. "My parents didn't show how upset they were. But I knew they were terrified. All of us knew, except my 2-year-old sister.

"We prayed a lot. In the winter we went into farmhouses and slept in stacks of hay. We were always on the move and we never saw anybody."

One day in the summer of 1942 the Greifs saw a flier posted on a fence. It stated that any Jew caught hiding would be shot. But if Jews gave themselves up, they could work in a camp and survive.

"Well, when we read that we wanted to believe that was true, because it was too miserable of an existence," Greif says.

A terrible mistake

The Greifs turned themselves in to the Gestapo that day, and immediately were sent to the concentration camp in Rudki. The moment they entered the gates, they knew they had made a terrible mistake.

"No matter how bad it was to survive in the woods, this was a nightmare," Greif says. "We saw bodies piled up 6 feet high. We saw people throwing corpses on carts and we saw people sitting alongside buildings, looking like skeletons. The Nazis took us and pushed us into this barracks, where we were packed in like sardines.

"We stayed there the summer and winter of 1942, surviving on potato peelings because this was a starvation camp. They wanted us to starve."

Each day at the camp brought fresh terrors. Diseases like typhoid fever and dysentery quickly spread. The water was undrinkable, the food poisonous. People died every day.

Late one night in April of 1943, loud noises roused everyone. Gestapo members were going from door to door, forcing everyone out of their beds. Anyone who responded too slowly or refused to go was shot.

"As soon as this happened everyone started screaming. My father was hysterical, he knew what was happening. My mom wept and picked up my 2-year-old sister, Devorah, held her tightly in her arms and screamed, `We're all going to die!' " Greif says.

Amid this unfolding horror, Greif noticed the brick oven in their barracks, used by the Nazis for making bread.

"I grabbed my brother and we crawled into this oven. We were like wild animals just trying to hide. And it was pure luck that the Nazis didn't look inside."

While lying in the oven, the boys heard the Germans kick in the doors of the barracks and shout, "Rous! Rous!" ("Out! Out!") They listened to the shrieks and the wailing of those about to be murdered. They heard gunshots and, a few hours later, the heavy grinding sound of tractors.

"All day long and late into the night we stayed in that oven. Then we crawled on our stomachs until we reached the outside campgrounds. There was no one around, just a ghostly silence."

While the brothers hid in the oven, the Nazis had forced all of the Jews, including Isaac, Miriam and Devorah Greif, to assemble beside a long ditch, where they were shot. The noise the brothers heard was the dirt being pushed over the bodies and the sound of fences being torn down.

Once outside the camp, the brothers ran until they reached a farmhouse. The farmer was stunned.

"He shook his head and said, `My god, what have they done to you?' Because we were like ghosts, skeletons. We begged him for food, and he gave us a loaf of bread and a jar of milk.

"But when we asked him if we could hide at his farm, he said no. So we promised we would leave later that night, and we did. We fled again into the forest."

Conclusion next Sunday in Family: Deception, vodka and refuge.