Names Not Numbers

Tibor Spitz

Dolny Kubin, Slovak Republic

In Hiding

1929

Tibor Spitz

Dolny Kubin, Slovak Republic

1929

Tibor was born in 1929 in the small town of Dolný Kubín in northern Slovakia (Slovak Republic), which was then part of Czechoslovakia. His father was a cantor for the Jewish community, and his mother was a teacher. Between the ages of 10 and 15, he was not allowed to attend public schools and faced the constant threat of either immediate murder or deportation to a death camp in nearby Poland.

He was 12 when almost all his deported relatives vanished without a trace in Nazi Death and Labor camps. During the early stages of deportations, the town received postcards from relatives who had already left, describing their accommodations in Slovak. On one postcard there was something that no one could decipher. They called his father over to look at it, and between the lines were the Hebrew words ‘lo tov,’ ‘not good.’

Despite these dangers, he managed to evade deportation. He helped bribe prison guards to free Jewish prisoners, including German doctors who revealed the horrors of the gas chambers. During the 1944 uprising, he and his family fled the city and hid in a forest, where his brother built a hideaway. In 1945, their hiding place was discovered, and they were attacked by Red Army Partisans.

They were liberated by the Soviet Army after seven months, during which he contracted tuberculosis.

After the war, he found himself trapped behind the Iron Curtain for 20 years. He married Noemi, also a Holocaust survivor, and was sent to Cuba to oversee glass factories. During a plane refuel in Gander, Newfoundland, he requested asylum.

He later studied chemistry in Prague and escaped to the West in 1968, eventually settling in Canada and later the United States. After his career as a scientist, he became a professional artist and lecturer on the Holocaust.

His artwork was exhibited in numerous solo and group shows across various venues, including galleries, museums, schools, colleges, and public institutions.

In recent decades, his solo exhibitions were held in New York State, New Jersey, Canada, his native Slovakia, Prague, the Art Society of Kingston, HCT, Gallery SEVEN21, and many other locations.

Names Not Numbers

Tibor Spitz

Tibor Spitz

The End