A survivor reflects

By Samuel Heider, Special To The Dayton Jewish Observer

Rosh Hashanah is celebrated throughout the Jewish world as the Jewish New Year. I was born in Poland in a small village by the name of Biejkow. I was the son of Jewish farmers.

For me, Rosh Hashanah is the most difficult time in my life. September 1940 was the last time I celebrated Rosh Hashanah together with my whole family: three sisters, two brothers, my mother, my father and my 1-year-old nephew.

I remember 73 years ago almost exactly to the date when my father, with the rest of my family, came back from the Rosh Hashanah services and we sat down to eat a special Rosh Hashanah meal, and as we were eating my father said, “Kinder (children), I am afraid this might be the last time we will celebrate Rosh Hashanah together. Only God knows if we will ever celebrate Rosh Hashanah again.”

A few months later, we were forced to leave our home and our farm, which we owned for a generation, and were put in a ghetto in a nearby shtetl town Bialobrzegi together with 8,000 men, women and children, 10 in a room, to live under the most inhumane condition mankind has ever known.

From a family of nine, I am the only survivor. The rest of my family were sent to the gas chambers of Treblinka. And I was sent to five different concentration camps including Auschwitz.

At the selection in Auschwitz, I faced the Angel of Death, Josef Mengele, waiting for him to decide whether I should live or be put in the crematorium of Birkenau.

He finally came to my row and looked straight in my eyes with his sadistic smiling face and he motioned me to the right. Had he motioned me to the left, I wouldn’t be here today.

After the selection in Auschwitz I was sent to several more concentration camps including Dachau. In Dachau we didn’t work. We were just waiting to be put into gas chambers. The only reason I survived Dachau was because I was only in Dachau for a short time.

Although I was only there for a short time, I experienced the most inhumane conditions. In Dachau, in order to get some watery soup, we had to climb over piles of dead bodies, and we didn’t know if the smell was from the soup or from the dead bodies.

As for my own experience, when I went to get some soup, I asked for a piece of potato, which I could find in the soup. A Jewish kapo hit me over the head and I dropped the soup. When I tried to pick up whatever was on the ground, he smashed it with his shoes. Therefore, many times I didn’t even go for the soup.

I didn’t care if I would live or die. Life was meaningless and there was no hope of survival. I lived most of the time eating off the piece of bread which we received each day. There was only one piece of bread for eight people.

We were forced to leave Dachau and put on a train in cattle cars, 60 people to a car, with no food, no water, and no sanitary facilities. It was standing room only. Many of us died on the train. After leaving Dachau, with no place to go, just going back and forth, we were finally liberated on the train on April 30, 1945 in a place called Staltach.

I could never have dreamed that I would be here 73 years later, telling just a small part of my life during the Holocaust. And especially at Rosh Hashanah 2013.

How did I survive the Holocaust and why I am the only survivor of a family of nine? I don’t know the answer. Perhaps God knows the answer or there is no answer.

Although I survived the Holocaust, the images from the piles of the dead bodies in Dachau will remain with me for the rest of my life.

As long as the gates to Israel are open, the doors to the crematoriums are going to be closed forever! Never again!

Samuel Heider, a longtime resident of Dayton, lives in Hallandale, Fla.