Shelomo Selinger (M / Poland, 1928), Holocaust survivor
Shelomo Selinger (M / Poland, 1928), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : various camps <Theresienstadt> <Liberation of Theresienstadt>
Biography
Shelomo Selinger was born May 31, 1928 to a Jewish family in Poland in the small town of Szczakowa (today part of Jaworzno) near Oświęcim (Auschwitz). He received both a traditional Jewish upbringing and a Polish public school education. In 1943 he was deported with his father from the Chrzanów ghetto to the Faulbrück concentration camp in Germany. Three months later his father was murdered and Shelomo remained alone in the camp. His mother as well as one of his sisters also perished during the Holocaust. Shelomo Selinger survived nine German death camps: Faulbrück, Gröditz, Markstadt, Fünfteichen, Gross-Rosen, Flossenburg, Dresden, Leitmeritz and finally Theresienstadt, as well as two death marches.
He was discovered, still breathing, on a stack of dead bodies when the Terezin camp was liberated in 1945 by the Red Army. The Jewish military doctor who pulled Shelomo out of the pile of corpses transferred him to a military field hospital where he was taken care of and where he came back to life. He recovered his health but lost his memory and for seven years was completely amnesic to his past sufferings and horrors.
In 1946 Shelomo Selinger emigrated to Palestine. He then moved to Paris, France in 1956.
He became a famous sculptor.