Names Not Numbers

Samuel Beller

Auschwitz, Poland

Sosnowiec Ghetto

Auschwitz Concentration Camp

Blechhammer Concentration Camp

1927

Samuel Beller

Auschwitz, Poland

1927

Samuel was born on August 9, 1927, in Oswiecim, Poland, also known as the town of Auschwitz. His town was small, with only about 6,000 residents. He had a younger brother, three years his junior, and a sister, six years younger. His father worked as a peddler, selling fabrics to Germans on the Polish side of the border, while his mother was a housewife. The family lived in a small apartment with no toilet.

Samuel attended public school in the mornings, a co-ed school controlled by Catholics, and in the afternoons, he studied at the Dumbska yeshivah. However, life changed dramatically when the war broke out. On the same day, the Nazis took over their town.

After one year, the family was forced out of their apartment and sent to the Bedzin Sosnowiec Ghetto. Jews living in the area had to take in those expelled from Oswiecim.

In the ghetto, the Germans seized the nice Jewish-owned apartments, forcing the Jews to live in cellars with dirt floors.

Samuel’s father was sent to a labor camp, leaving his mother and siblings in the ghetto. Samuel was given a job by the Jewish government, working for two German brothers who made army uniforms. In the mornings, he cleaned their home, and in the afternoons, he packed uniforms.

Eventually, he was sent to several forced labor camps.

In 1943, Samuel was slated for transport to Auschwitz, so he went into hiding. The Judenrat searched for him and, unable to find him, took his mother and siblings instead. After hiding for two days, Samuel came out and narrowly missed the transport to Auschwitz. Instead, he was sent to a labor camp.

Later, Samuel was moved to a hard labor camp and eventually to Blechhammer Concentration Camp, the largest sub-camp of Auschwitz, where he remained for six months. He was forced to endure the Death March and briefly stayed at Buchenwald and another concentration camp. As the Allied forces closed in, Samuel and others were packed into cattle cars without food for three days.

When the cattle car doors finally opened, two American soldiers stood before them, announcing, "You are free." The soldiers removed both the living and the dead from the car. Samuel, suffering from typhus, spent three months in the hospital.

After his recovery, Samuel was sent to "Fenvelt" and lived in barracks with a group of Hungarian boys. The Hungarians, having been deported later than the Polish Jews, were still religious.

They took away the non-kosher food Samuel was eating and brought him to the Klausenberger Rebbe, helping him return to a religious life. Though Samuel had lost his religious observance during the war, these boys led him back to his faith.

He then spent time in a Displaced Persons (DP) camp before emigrating to the United States, where he enrolled in a yeshivah to continue his education.

Names Not Numbers

Samuel Beller

Samuel Beller

The End