Until early 1944, he lived an ordinary life.

“Life was fairly normal in 1944 even though there was that war, that awful war, had been going on for five years already,” Holocaust survivor Henry Friedman told a group of Model High School students Monday.

In March 1944 everything changed — the Germans occupied Hungary and began to enact the policies felt by Jews throughout Nazi Germany during World War II. They were harassed, marked and segregated. Overnight, it seemed, the rules had changed and family members began to disappear.

“Overnight the bottom fell out,” he said.

Friedman, at the age of 21, was drafted into the auxiliary German forces and was sent via train to an arms manufacturing facility near Budapest.

“I kissed my family goodbye … not knowing I’d never see them again,” he said.

But he focused most, it seemed, not on the injuries but on the small kindnesses, the little victories — finding a frozen piece of chicken when starving, a nurse giving assistance in a way that reminded him he was a human being, or a Swedish diplomat who aided him with food and protection.

But the horrific facts of the life of a Jew during those times remained and he was found no longer to be “useful” because of wounds sustained while carrying an injured Nazi soldier.

Those times faded in and out — loss of blood and no medical care taking their toll. He was revived for a moment, realized he was looking down the barrel of a rifle, then all faded to black.

He awoke later, covered in his comrades’ bodies. He had been facing a firing squad and was the only survivor. The warmth provided by the others was the only thing that kept him alive.

“They kept me from freezing to death,” Friedman said.

Eventually he made it “home” to find his home had been reappropriated, much of the furniture remained but his family was not there. He traveled to Italy, where he watched a film that truly spoke to him and what he’d been through — “Gone With the Wind.”

“Everything that was dear to me … gone with the wind,” Friedman said. “And if you ever told me at that time I’d be in Atlanta, Georgia — I wouldn’t believe you. This place was a fantasy — Atlanta, Georgia.”

But he did, in fact, come to Atlanta in 1950. Six years later Friedman got married, and two years after that had a son. He took along with him a series of tough lessons learned.

It wasn’t until many years later that Friedman began speaking about his experiences. And it wasn’t until after he read an article about the Jews in the Warsaw Ghetto who buried letters so others would know what happened to them.

“Their biggest fear they had was the future generation would not know what happened to them — how they died,” Friedman said.

Several students in Tim Yancey’s 10th grade World Literature class stayed behind after the speech talking with Friedman, asking him how his experiences have shaped his life.

Friedman replied to always look at life as something to be accomplished and not something that must endured.

“I’m awed that I get to experience someone’s life story,” said Sarah Corbitt, a member of Yancey’s class. The students are studying the novel “Night” by the outspoken Holocaust survivor Elie Weisel.

“It’s very sad to me,” Berenice Silva. “I didn’t live any of that but it’s still sad.”

“It’s often hard to identify with a story that’s so far removed from their own,” said Mark Brooks, a volunteer with The William Breman Jewish Heritage and Holocaust Museum, who traveled with Friedman for the visit to Model.

However, he added, when students see a person in the hall being bullied or prejudice in action — this is a point in which they can use the lesson that was hard learned by many others.

“You are all now witnesses to the Holocaust,” Brooks told the students.