Alexander Lebenstein, the only Jew from a small German town to survive the Holocaust, started receiving invitations in 1987 to return there. He turned them down four times.

"I told them no. Drop dead. Don't bother me," said the native of Haltern am See who lives in Henrico County.

But on May 26, Lebenstein, 80, will make his fifth trip to Haltern. On June 4, he will be made an honorary citizen, the highest recognition the city can give -- an honor that hasn't been bestowed on anyone in 50 years. On June 6, a school will be named in Lebenstein's honor.

It's a dramatic development for a man who said he once felt such hatred for his homeland that he fantasized about bombing it.

But in 1994, he had a change of heart after receiving letters from two students asking him to come and help them understand what the Holocaust was like.

When he finally returned to Haltern in 1995 -- almost 50 years after he left Germany, swearing he would never go back -- he was moved by the students' pain from guilt they felt about their families' role in the persecution of Jewish citizens.

"These students are not guilty of having done anything wrong," he said. "And I am not guilty of doing anything wrong. But both of us are suffering."

In a Jan. 30 letter telling Lebenstein he was being made an honorary citizen, Bodo Klimpel, Haltern's mayor, said: "I value your spontaneous and direct way of interacting with other people and that you make no secret of your feelings."

The upcoming events underscore what has become Lebenstein's mission -- teaching tolerance and fighting racism.

"It's totally overwhelming," he said.

. . .

Lebenstein was about 7 when he realized he was different from other children. Some youngsters would not play with him because he was Jewish. His formal education ended with the fourth grade when Adolf Hitler banned Jews from schools.

Lebenstein's father, Natan, who had fought for Germany during World War I, lost his license to work as a meat grinder. "My father couldn't afford to keep my two older sisters, and they were sent to England to work," he said.

On Nov. 10, 1938, a few days after his 11th birthday, the Nazis looted homes in Haltern. Young Alex was desperately frightened as his family hid first in their vegetable garden and then in a Jewish cemetery. Friends took them to a hotel, where they hid in the basement.

"I could hear the Nazis dancing at the bar above us," he said.

It was Kristallnacht, the beginning of the Holocaust in which 6 million Jews lost their lives.

Along with Haltern's other Jewish residents, the Lebensteins were ordered to live in a ghetto. About three years later, they were forced to leave their town. In the bitterly cold winter of 1942, "we rode in a cattle car for five days to the ghetto in Riga, Latvia. People died. We ran out of food."

Lebenstein's father lasted only three months in Riga. Natan Lebenstein worked in a slaughterhouse where hides were salted. A cut on his hand became infected, resulting in blood poisoning and lockjaw.

"My father became delirious, screaming, wild and foaming from his mouth. No longer able to work; he was taken forcefully from us. My last memory is looking from a window and seeing a body being loaded onto a sled. I think this was my father. They killed him on the way down the steps."

At 14½, Lebenstein was sent to Hasenpot, Latvia, to do labor in the peat bogs. He was stricken with typhus. When he was sent back to the Riga ghetto, his mother, Lotti, was gone.

He spent more than a year in concentration camps -- first Kaiserwald, where he worked in the kitchen peeling potatoes for Nazi guards, then Stutthof, then Burggraben, a sub-camp of Stutthof. He worked in the shipyards of Danzig, painting German U-boats.

"I was so thin by then, I looked like a skeleton," he said.

When the Russians freed the prisoners at Burggraben in March 1945, Lebenstein, by then 17, was battling another bout of typhus. He believes he would not have lived had liberation occurred a few days later. Russian doctors helped with his recovery, he said.

He made his way back to Haltern, hoping to find his mother. But he learned that she, too, had been killed. "I found out that she was marched to the forest near Riga and never returned. I believe she's buried in a mass grave there."

Strangers were living in the family's home. Former schoolmates who were Nazi supporters taunted him, and he sometimes fought back. Not feeling safe in his hometown, he went to live in a displaced persons camp in Deggendorf, Bavaria.

Almost two years after he was liberated, his sister Alice, who lived in Great Britain, found his name on a survivor list and notified his other sister, Rose, who lived in Richmond. They persuaded him to come to the United States.

He arrived in New York on Jan. 16, 1947, and then lived in Richmond for a year. He moved to Miami Beach, Fla., seeking a warmer climate after becoming ill. There, he met Mary Attas at a picnic, and they were married. "She was the sun in my eyes, dark, beautiful and single," Lebenstein said.

The couple had two sons. The family moved to New York City, and he eventually opened a grocery, meat market and delicatessen. After 27 years of marriage, he and Mary divorced. Lebenstein moved back to Richmond in 1994, several years after retiring.

. . .

When he finally agreed to return to Germany in 1995, "it was with a lot of caution and suspicion. I simply did not trust my feelings [or] how I would react. I harbored such anger and hate at being driven out of my home in 1938, and then, after surviving incredible suffering, returning in 1945 and feeling not welcomed. I did not know if I could ever trust the people in Haltern again," Lebenstein said.

Meeting the students surprised him. "They were hurting so much and searching for answers to what had gone wrong in Germany. It made me realize that we shared a need for reconciliation. I saw that we could help each other overcome our mutual pain. . . . I could help them heal from the guilt they carried for the actions of their forefathers, and they could help me learn that my hate and anger would eventually destroy me."

Lovisa Lane, 18, who met Lebenstein when he visited Haltern, said he helped students understand that the horrors of the Holocaust aren't that distant. "It happened here in our streets to someone we know," she wrote in an e-mail message. "Our grandparents were involved during this horrible time. Maybe as helpers or as people 'who didn't know about anything.' These people were all normal people like we are today. It is just up to us not to let something like this nightmare ever happen again."

Since Lebenstein's first visit to Haltern, students at the Real Schule have demonstrated and marched through the city in January on Holocaust Remembrance Day there, and in November in commemoration of Kristallnacht. Each year, the graduating class takes on a project aimed at teaching tolerance.

Because of its work, the Real Schule earned the title "School Against Racism; School with Courage" and elected Lebenstein as its godfather. He returned in 2000 to accept the honor. In 2003, the students found an old cattle car and turned it into a Holocaust museum. Lebenstein was there for the unveiling. He also went to Haltern in 2006.

And he'll be back in the town next month when the Real Schule, with more than 1,000 students ages 12 to 17, is renamed the Alexander Lebenstein School Against Racism.

"Children can make a difference," Lebenstein said. "I'm overwhelmed that the city and school has done so much to fight racism and intolerance."