On May 12, 1988, at Kean University in Union, New Jersey, Shlomo Biezunski sat for a two-hour long interview as part of the Fortunoff Video Archive for Holocaust Testimonies at Yale University. As part of this interview, Shlomo gave a detailed account of his life and the unimaginable horrors he endured in occupied Poland and in Germany during World War II.
Shlomo was born on May 13, 1926 in Lodz, Poland to father Moshe and mother Perel. The younger of two children, he had one sister named Malka.
In Lodz, his father owned a pharmacy named “BIEZUNSKA” on the ground floor of their apartment building. He and his sister both attended private Jewish schools and lived a comfortable life. That all changed when German troops marched into Lodz in September 1939. Shortly after their arrival, Shlomo’s father was murdered by the soldiers along with many other Jewish men from the area.
In 1940, the occupying troops forced the family into the newly constructed Ghetto. Shlomo lived there with his mother and sister in one room, and attended school in the morning. In the evening, he worked as an apprentice in a metalworking factory, where he learned the skills that saved his life.
In August 1944, the Germans begin to liquidate the Ghetto. At the age of 18, after being separated from his mother and sister, he arrived by train alone in the concentration camp known as Auschwitz-Birkenau. He would never see his mother and sister again. Eventually, the occupiers transported Shlomo to Furstengrube, one of the peripheral sub-camps of Auschwitz-Birkenau, where he worked in a machine shop until all persons evacuated the camp in January 1945. The skills that he learned in the Ghetto saved his life.
From Furstengrube, under the watch of Nazi guards, he survived the Death March, with stops in several industrial work camps (Dara-Mittlebau, Turmaline) until the remaining survivors reached the German naval base at Neushdat, Germany. On May 7th, a week short of his birthday, British troops captured the base and liberated Shlomo. Neushdat became a DP (displaced person) camp, but also a place of Jewish rebirth. In the camp, he served as a gym teacher.
From Neushdat, Shlomo decided to leave for Bergen-Belzen, another DP camp with an active Zionist movement. There Haganah recruited him to smuggle Jews from Europe to Palestine (the Bricha). His last assignment was in 1948. From Marseilles, France, he sailed with gathered survivors to Palestine shortly before Israel’s Declaration of Independence. After basic training, he traveled to the Negev region where he served in the Armored Corps. After the war, he joined the Israel Electric Company, where he met Bella. Bella soon became his beautiful wife and mother of his two sons.
After several years working for the Electric Company and fighting in the Sinai campaign, he decided to start his own business, a small tool and die making shop in Tel Aviv.
A year after the Six Day War, Shlomo seized an opportunity to migrate to the United States. This was during the Vietnam War and the U.S. needed machinists. Shlomo first worked in Paterson, NJ, and later worked for Sandvik Steel until his retirement. During their retirement years, he and his wife enjoyed traveling abroad, shows on Broadway, and social gatherings with friends.
Read more about Shlomo’s exceptional life at https://biezunski.com/
The audio of this video has been remastered for clarity. Please follow this link to view the original video with unmodified audio: https://youtu.be/bOQ1UNXj_l8