A Holocaust Survivor Visits Our Class

My class was blessed with a rare and memorable experience last week when Mr. Salomon Wainberg, a Holocaust survivor, visited our class and shared his amazing story. Mr. Wainberg's visit was the fulfillment of a dream I had carried for many years to actually host a survivor in my classroom. Through all the years I have been teaching Holocaust education, only once did my students hear a survivor's story in person, and that was when we took a field trip to the Florida Holocaust Museum several years ago and heard Sam Shryber give his testimony. In fact, it was only through my participation in the Holocaust and Jewish Resistance Teacher's Program in Poland and Israel that I realized hosting a Holocaust survivor in my classroom was a very real possibility.

Salomon Wainberg was born April 15, 1936, in Zelechow, Poland, to a Jewish family who owned a food store and warehouse. He was only three when the Germans invaded Poland in 1939. Soon after invasion, the family home was enclosed in the Zelechow Ghetto, and a family of four from the country was forced to move in with them.

On Tuesdays, non-Jews were allowed to enter the ghetto market, and rumors began to trickle in from farmers who lived near Treblinka about full trains entering the camp and empty trains leaving, sparks at night from the chimney, and the smell of burning flesh. Then, in 1942, a cousin of the Wainberg's escaped Treblinka and confirmed the horrible news.

Mr. Wainberg's father made contact with a Mr. Edvard Turek to arrange for a hiding place in the country, but before anyone was able to leave, Mr. Wainberg was picked up by the Nazis and taken with a work crew out of the ghetto. Before he left, he directed Mrs. Wainberg to send their two daughters to a Mr. & Mrs. Sokol's farmhouse that night, and for her to leave with the two boys the following night. The girls escaped, but the next morning was two days after Yom Kippur (Day of Atonement), and the Nazis had selected that day to begin liquidating the ghetto. Mrs. Wainberg fled down the street with her two boys and hid in an attic with 36 other people for 16 days while the Nazis looted the ghetto. Eventually Mrs. Wainberg and her sons were able to escape, but she got lost and they had to spend the day in the loft of a barn. The next night when they finally arrived at the farmhouse they were reunited with the two girls and surprisingly, Mr. Wainberg, who had gotten away from the work detail.


The Wainberg family hid in the cellar of the farmhouse with a total of 24 people. Every day Mr. Sokol would bring them buckets of soup and water, and he would take out their buckets of waste. The conditions in the cellar were very difficult. Some people smoked, and in April of 1943, one of the men died from tuberculosis. They were unable to bury him for three days.

One day, in June of 1944, while the Sokol family was working in the fields, they heard boots on the floor above their heads. They were terrified, and two of the young men in the group who had guns announced that if anyone entered the cellar, they would begin shooting. They heard the closet on wheels that covered the hidden entrance moving and then a series of trap doors opening. When the cellar door opened, there was a shootout. Young Salomon blacked out, and when he awoke, the cellar occupants were lined up along a wall and blood was everywhere. Their captors were Polish bandits, not Nazis, and they wanted money. Mr. Wainberg fabricated a story about hidden gold in the ghetto, and the bandits believed him, but by the time they buried the dead from the shootout, including one of the Wainberg daughters and an aunt, it was nearing daylight. Mr. Wainberg convinced the bandits to leave and return at night so that he could lead them to the gold.


While the bandits were away, the survivors fled and began a 7-week journey wandering from place to place stealing from food storage caves and hiding in rye fields. At the end of July 1944, conditions worsened and they could hear the sounds of battle in the distance. On August 2, 1944, they met up with Russian troops who escorted them back to Zelechow. A man who had bought the Wainberg home from the Germans gave it back to them. Only ten of the 24 people who had hidden in the cellar survived.

In 1943 there had been approximately 15,000 Jews in the Zelechow Ghetto. By January of 1945, only 250 remained. One day that same month, Polish farmers came to market with pitchforks and sickles to "finish the Nazis' job." Nine Jews were killed, and 36 were wounded in the pogrom.


Eventually, through a twisted course of events, Salomon Wainberg made his way to the United States and became a CPA. He retired in 1998 and moved to the Tampa area to be near his grandchildren.

When asked about the Righteous Among the Nations status of his rescuers, Mr. Wainberg said that later, after the cellar occupants escaped, Mr. Sokol's rescue efforts were discoverd by the Nazis, and he was executed. The other rescuers requested that he halt efforts to seek righteous status for them due to the unpopularity of the honor among their neighbors.

My mother, Mrs. Evelyn Blount, videotaped Mr. Wainberg's testimony.

Our class is collecting money to send a donation in Mr. Wainberg's honor to the Florida Holocaust Museum in hopes of furthering Holocaust education in our area.



Links:

Memorial Book of the Community of Zelechow

Wikipedia: Zelechow

Yad Vashem