Shmuel Shilo (M / Poland, 1929-2011), Holocaust survivor

Shmuel Shilo (M / Poland, 1929-2011), Holocaust survivor

• KEYWORDS : <Luck Ghetto> <Hidden Children> <Partisans> -- <Selvino Children>

Biography

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Shmulik "Shmuel" Shilo was born December 1, 1929 in Łuck, eastern Poland (now Lutsk, Ukraine). He survived the liquidation of the Luck Ghetto. He spend time hidden by a Polish family and then by the partisans. After the war he was one of the Selvino Children. He moved to Palestina, where he became an actor, director and producer.

He died October 4, 2011.

Yad Vashem

Reflecting on the encounter with Brigade soldiers, Shmuel Shilo recalls:

"We had no faith in adults, because the adults we knew either wanted to kill us, or were Jews who… looked after themselves and not after us. And here, suddenly, were adults, moreover soldiers and officers, who looked after me, and wanted me to live, to learn, to get dressed, who wanted me to eat, who wanted to bring me to Eretz Israel… I don't know if it would have been worthwhile staying alive, or whether I would have stayed alive - if Eretz Israel had not existed. If I hadn’t connected with the Jewish Brigade. Because my first encounter with Eretz Israel, with something totally different, was through the Brigade. I think Eretz Israel saved my life."

Shmuel Shilo, who was a mature and serious 16-year-old when he arrived there, recalls his first days in Selvino:

"After two weeks I also began to throw pillows, and I also started dancing with girls, and I also started playing football… It took two weeks, no longer, and we were restored to our original age. I think that one of the main things about Selvino… was that this house – for the time period that we were there, a little more than a year – gave us back our youth… Selvino was a colony of Eretz Israel. True, we spoke Polish, or Yiddish, or Hungarian, but cultural life was conducted in Hebrew."