It all started for Dan’s grandfather, Shlomo Biezunski, when he was born in 1926 in the town of Lodz, Poland which was a major center of textiles before the war often called the “Manchester of Poland”. His family lived in the Jewish section of the town where they owned a drug store. He lived with his older sister Manya, his father Moshe, and his mother Pearl. Right after World War I, his father fought in the 1920 Polish-Soviet War and was present for the decisive victory against the communists in the Battle of Warsaw where the Russians were repulsed, and Poland became an independent state. After the war his family enjoyed a solidly middle-class lifestyle and even lived in a 6-room apartment next to a fancy hotel called the “Polonia”. Shlomo recalls the new elevator systems installed in several buildings, including his own, and how they were particularly enrapturing to the Poles of the time. His family’s store was on the bottom floor which his family ran with the help of a young girl hired as a clerk. School started for Shlomo at age 7 and was his life for the next 6 years. He was a particularly avid reader and would find himself at the local library on many days. Shlomo remembers being able to grasp written language from an early age, as he still can recall reading his first shocking headlines detailing the carnage of the Spanish Civil War of 36-39, which ironically became a dress rehearsal for WWII as the Spanish Nationalists were supported militarily by Hitler and their Republican government which was being backed by several future Allies. However, somewhat unusually, Shlomo had avoided any personal encounters with anti-Semitism in his childhood despite seeing it from afar in racially charged public labor/student strikes. Shlomo attributes this to two main factors within his life. First being that they were a solidly middle-class family, meaning they were respected by the community at large and ran a thriving store. Second, Biezunski is a very Polish name according to Shlomo and the Poles at the time would not be able to deduce his Jewish background from his name alone. Nevertheless, despite being able to remain inconspicuous due to his Polish descent, his family would not be safe from the fanatical anti-Semitism that the Nazis would bring upon Poland when they chose it to be their first target in what quickly exploded into the second world war.
September 1st, 1939, Hitler’s blitzkrieg (“lightning war”) on Poland began, and Shlomo’s life would be changed forever. Shlomo’s hometown of Lodz was bombed early on, however it resulted in little devastation as the Nazi commander in the region, Franken, was a German-Pole and did not want to cause unnecessary harm to Polish civilians. After six days, Warsaw was encircled, and Poland was effectively neutralized. As tribute to the victorious army, the civilians were supposed to line the streets and greet the Nazis which was their typical routine. When they were captured, Shlomo says they were not sad, but quite jubilant. They expected respect and prosperity to result from being conquered by such a great Nazi regime and hoped that their nation would now too share in the wealth of the ever-growing empire. Shlomo remembers this day well and says that even he was impressed by the Nazi military machine and vividly remembers a huge swastika flying from the roof of city hall. In the first months, Shlomo recalls respecting and being respected by the German army soldiers stationed there. It pains me to imagine what false hope for the future this may have instilled within him and his family prior to what would be the greatest genocide in human history. With the entrance of the Gestapo and SS a few months after the invasion, came the end of feelings of equality and or human decency for Shlomo for the next several years of his life. Shlomo said that shortly after the arrival of the Gestapo and SS, several local Jewish families began leaving including his father’s Jewish store clerk. However, because both his parents spoke fluent German, they hired an Aryan-looking girl named Eva to replace their old clerk; they thought they could fool any Nazis they would be questioned by as they looked nothing like the caricatured propaganda images of Jews presented to the German people. Things began to get rough for Shlomo’s family, but they were aided partially by the help of a kind administrative officer living downstairs that offered to help them if the Nazis ever gave them trouble, and sometimes gave them bread. Then the war finally struck home for Shlomo.
That January the Gestapo came to pick up Shlomo’s father and hundreds of other Jews, namely army veterans, to electric trolley cars and made them pack inside. They were then machinegunned to death. The officers decided to then call the families and make them pick up the bodies of their loved ones. Shlomo, at age 13, brought his favorite Canadian sled to the site of the massacre and with the help of a friend he dragged his father’s body to the local Jewish cemetery so that he could be given a proper Jewish burial. This proper service was denied to nearly all the victims of the Holocaust. Despite this shattering blow to the family, his mother a strong business woman managed to recover as much assets from the store as possible and close it down. This was perfect timing as in May they were told to relocate to the new Jewish Quarter, the Nazi-run Lodz Ghetto. Upon arriving there by tram, his family was each given different jobs in the ghetto to help fuel the Nazi war effort. Shlomo was put into a machine shop and even given minor schooling and training by the Nazis on how to operate the necessary machinery. Some old customers who knew his father helped his family during these tough times, as they still held prominence in the community. The strong would die first because of lack of food, Shlomo’s habitual “bad eating” and skinny features helped him get through these times. Eventually, Shlomo’s mother was arrested for unknown reasons and kept for three weeks. When she returned, he recalls her not being the same women mentally or physically as she had lost a tremendous amount of weight. Then in 1942, the anti-Semitic activity in the ghetto greatly increased and his family experienced horrifying abuses.
Resistance was impossible with the armed enemies all around as even the local Poles were happy to get rid of the Jews who were business competitors in the pre-war years. Despite the danger, Shlomo risked his life participating in a metal workers’ strike in the ghetto. In 1944, the Russians gathered across the Vistula as their vengeful offensive pushed ever westward. Shlomo and his fellow workers were told they were being sent into the heart of Germany to help turn the tide of the war back in favor of Germany by fueling their industry. The real reason was that the German reinforcements were nonexistent due to Hitler’s inept military planning after his high-risk Operation Barbarossa failed tremendously and the furious Russian counterattack which followed gained enough momentum to push them all the way back to their own borders. After being given, scraps of food, they are crammed into train cars and end up at what many described to be Hell on Earth, the front gates of Auschwitz-Birkenau death camp. The throngs were shoved off the trains as if they were filled cattle and they were split into two groups: those that can work and those who cannot. Shlomo is deemed fit enough to work; however, his sister and mother were weary from the travels and were deemed unfit. This split was unfortunately the last time he would see his mother or sister. They were up stripped of their valuables, gassed and thrown into mass Jewish graves thousands of miles from their home. However, Shlomo’s story was far from over. Shlomo claims he remembers never being sick. He saw many die around him from typhus, tuberculosis, and beatings. He had a strong will to survive; he remembers sitting next to young man who had lost hope one day and tells Shlomo, “I want to be dead”, he tried to convince that he is strong and could continue on. The next day, he looked over and the boy was dead in the same place without anyone having touched him.
One day the Gestapo came looking for “skilled craftsmen” and Shlomo stood up saying he was a “layman”. The officer looked at him up and down before saying in German that he can be of use. This was Shlomo’s ticket to life as inevitably he would have died inside the walls of Auschwitz, a death camp, designed for the sole purpose of the mass genocide. He was one of 360 taken to a coal mine; when they arrived all their hair was shaved off, and disinfectant poured on their heads. Shlomo remembers well the irritation this caused him on his first night. Then the next day he was given a uniform, wooden shoes, and a good meal, his first in a long time, and sent to work in the mines. A young SS lieutenant named Schmidt is placed in charge of Shlomo’s group of workers. In an incredible stroke of luck, he was a new replacement for the old commander who were transferred to Auschwitz due to his extreme proficiency for murdering people. Schmidt was an entirely different Nazi, he treated the Jews as equals and never discriminated. The reason he got control of the camp was because his father-in-law owned the mine before the war. He had family nearby and he even recalls his wife cooking food for the camp workers, something completely against Nazi dogma. He was then transferred to a machine shop where he continued to be fed well which helped his strength return in the later stages of the war.
In January 1945, the big Nazi retreat to Berlin began as the Allied attack on Hitler reached its terrible climax. Having gained his strength, Shlomo began to march for 80 kilometers to an unknown destination. He was greatly aided by the shoes he got in the machine shop and a poncho he fashioned out a large piece of material. Anybody who straggled from the group or tried to escape was shot. He remembers hearing the constant ringing of gunshots from the back of the column. He arrived at Gliwice, and then saw piles stacked high with bodies like logs covered in lime, a stark reminder of what was still going on around him. He was then put on another train for a whole week that had to take an extended route to Germany due to the Allied advance. When they got off the train, they were greeted by Croatian SS where Shlomo was given a little bread and nothing else for days. To survive he had to mix snow and lime to eat for nutrition. Soon the floor was so full of dead bodies they were standing on them. Eventually they were transported to Czechoslovakia by truck.
Shlomo remembers how desperate things were getting as he was covered in scratches from constant scuffles and now his group has dwindled down to 2,000 from 10,000. Shlomo spent a few days at the Nordhausen concentration camp, and unfortunately had to witness several hangings of people who were caught trying to escape. At this point in the war, SS officers were desperate to find business to do at the camp because if they were caught idle they were being ordered to the frontlines to help defend the Fatherland which was basically a death sentence. He was put under the charge of an older nondiscriminatory SS officer who selected him to go work as a craftsman somewhere elsewhere. When he got there, he remembers not being forced into labor intensively and he remembers feeling the end of the war coming. He marched from the Elbe River, up to the Kaiser Wilhelm canal where he was then brought to Ansbach. Where he then worked on a farm that housed around one hundred Jews in a single farm house; they were used to do local farm work, but he recalls being treated supremely in comparison to his other workplaces.
Now with the war in its end stages, Shlomo’s group was taken to a German sub base and was told they will be brought to Sweden by a German ocean liner, the SS Cap Arcona. After being stuffed with 10 people in a room, meant for one in a top floor deck, the boat was caught under fire shortly after it embarked because it got caught in an ensuring skirmish by invading British forces and was bombed by Allied aircraft and slowly sunk. By sheer luck and determination, skinny Shlomo pushes past everyone to sneak on deck and manage to swim clear of the boat and the forming whirlpool caused from sinking. He was picked up later that night by fishermen commissioned by the British army to search the water for survivors. He was 1 of 37 who was picked and with this last miraculous instance of beating the odds, Shlomo’s ultimately tragic Holocaust experience was effectively over. Shlomo’s story is a true testament of the will of the human spirit to survive and endure. After the Holocaust my grandfather went to Israel to start his life. He met my grandma, Bella, and had two sons Oded and Ram. He also helped to solidify not only his freedom but the new freedom of the Jewish State of Israel, by fighting in the Palmach in the War for Independence and then again in the Six Day War.