CURRICULUM VITAE

Life of Samuel Lerer

He was born in Zolklewka in Poland, where he looked after horses as a child. In May 1942 the SS deported him and his whole family in trucks via Krasnistaw to Sobibor. Only he and his two brothers were picked out to work: the rest of the family went to the gas-chambers. Until shortly before the revolt he looked after the horses in the camp, which gave him much more freedom of movement then others, even going regularly out of the camp. As a personal friend of Feldhendler, he worked as a courier for the underground committee.

During the escape following the revolt he lost both of his brothers.
After walking for three nights he ended up again in the vicinity of the camp. After one and a half month a friendly farmer allowed him and survivor Esther Raab to go into hiding in a hut of hay. They stayed hidden in the hay for nine months and hardly ever saw daylight. After the liberation he stayed a while longer in Poland: then, because anti-Semitism began to rage with renewed force (three of his friends were murdered, including Feldhendler) he left for Berlin. He started a small jewellery business there. He supplemented his earnings by selling cigarettes and suchlike on the black market. In Berlin he felt save from anti-Semitism: “I had nothing to fear from the Germans: they were afraid of their own shadows”. In a marketplace in the Kreuzberg district of Berlin he recognised the ‘Gasmaster’ of Sobibor, Erich Bauer, and fetched the police. Bauer was arrested. His arrest and prosecution was the first in a series of trials of Sobibor war criminals through which Sobibor was given public attention for the first time. ‘Otherwise no one would have known about Sobibor’.

In 1951 he left for the United States: he could not speak a word of English. He worked several years in a hat business. Poverty and bad housing were rife. He met his present wife, who is also Polish, on Esther Raab’s farm in New Jersey, where other survivors of Sobibor were staying. After a couple of years he started a grocery shop and later a medium-sized supermarket. On the advice of friends he bought a taxi. He was taxi-driver until quite recently: now he has a limousine and drives by appointment.
He has a reserved character but is decided in his judgements. He was offended that he did not play a part in the American TV docu-drama ‘Escape from Sobibor’ in 1987, because of his great freedom of movement in the camp, he was an important informant for the underground committee.

Samuel Lerer used to live in Canarsi, a suburb of Brooklyn.

 

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