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

Mrs. Field Speaks During Geography Class

A few weeks ago Mrs. Field, our media specialist, visited our geography class to share about her travels to Morocco and Egypt. Her first-hand stories and photos gave gave us an authentic experience to supplement our study of the continent of Africa. Mrs. Field has not let an injury slow her down while meeting the media needs of our school.



Thanks, Mrs. Field, for visiting us and sharing your experiences!

Susan Elijah Remembers Plant City During the Civil Rights Era

Last week we finished reading A Dream of Freedom, the focus title for our Civil Rights thematic unit of study. Through our study of the Civil Rights Movement we learned about the Jim Crow laws and segregation in cities such as Birmingham, Montgomery, and Atlanta, but I wanted my students to know what it was like right here in Plant City, Florida, during that era. As I have for the past three years, I invited my dear friend and retired Tomlin media specialist Susan Elijah to speak to both of my reading classes about what it was like to grow up as a black child in Plant City during the 1950s and 1960s.


Mrs. Elijah shared her life story from birth through college and career with us. She was born in Tampa because Plant City only had hospital facilities for white people. Her grammar and high school education here in Plant City was segregated while she attended Simmons Elementary and Marshall High School. She explained how Plant City itself was segregated with the color lines being the railroad tracks that divided it running north and south and east and west. She recalled how blacks could work at the lunch counter in McCrory's dime store and in the kitchen at Snellgroves, but they couldn't sit at the lunch counter or in the dining room. If they wanted to buy food they had to go to the back door. Mrs. Elijah played trumpet in the Marshall High School band, and when it came time for the Strawberry Festival parade one of Plant City's two high schools led the parade and one was at the end. Of course Plant City High School was always at the front of the parade, and Marshall brought up the rear behind the horses. Mrs. Elijah summed everything up by saying that looking back she can see how unfair segregation was in our town during the civil rights era, but all things considered she said she still had a happy childhood growing up in Plant City.

The Great American Teach-In 2007

Tomlin Middle School hosted its annual Great American Teach-In last Wednesday, November 14. Our own career specialist, Mr. David Horn, did an amazing job booking and scheduling speakers as he has for the past ten years. A total of 121 guest speakers conducted 256 presentations school-wide. A special thank-you to Tomlin PTSA, Mrs. Carol Field, Mr. Horn's mom, and everyone else who assisted with this beneficial event. Early on, I asked Mr. Horn to give me a full slate of speakers for every period, and he did. Thanks, Mr. Horn!

First period, our extra-special guest speakers were my parents, Roland & Evelyn Blount. They are newly-retired career missionaries, and they have been visiting my class each year for as far back as I can remember. Their message to my students is always about overcoming adversity in our lives. My father went blind when he was 10 years old. He graduated from Florida School for the Deaf and Blind in St. Augustine, and then went on to earn a ministerial degree at Southeastern Bible College. He is a musician, singer, carpenter, pastor, missionary, audio technician, translator, and the best man I know. My mother is a sharecropper's daughter from right here in the Plant City area who overcame poverty to become the first person in her family to graduate from high school. Later, she became a television producer, director, and ordained minister. She is the most beautiful woman in the world to me and the best cook anywhere!


Other guest speakers were Mr. Galvez (internet marketing), Mrs. Girling (optician), Mrs. Spencer (cosmetology), Ms. Rodriguez (dog grooming), and Sensei Parker (martial arts). As a follow-up to this special day, I reviewed the five parts of a friendly letter, and the students wrote thank-you letters to our guests. We send our sincere thanks to all of our speakers for sharing your time and your careers with us!