Ziomek Hammer / Shlomo HaMeiri (M / Poland, 1934), Holocaust survivor
Ziomek Hammer / Shlomo HaMeiri (M / Poland, 1934), Holocaust survivor
- KEYWORDS : <Poland> <Tarnopol Ghetto> <Hidden Children, Poland> -- <Krakow Orphanage> <Israel>
Biography
Ziomek Hammer was born July 13, 1934 in Lvov, Poland. After survivibh the Tarnopol Ghetto, he and his family lived hidden in a barn with other Jews. His parent were murdered after the war. After spending some time at the Krakow Orphanage, Ziomek emigrated to Israel where he was given a new name, Shlomo HaMeiri.
USHMM
Shlomo HaMeiri (born Ziomek Hammer) is the son of Heinrich Hammer (b. 1905, Stanislawov) and Lola Tempel (b. 1905, Lvov). Heinrich and Lola each had gone to Vienna to study. After they married, they returned to Lvov where Heinrich completed his degree in engineering. Ziomek was born July 13, 1934 in Lvov, Poland. His father was an engineer. In 1940 Henrich joined the Russian army and was sent by the Russians to Leningrad. Ziomek and his mother joined her father Moshe Lev Temple in the village of Uhzedov. A while later, Ukrainians beat and executed him in front of Ziomek and his mother. They also attacked Lola. Afterwards, Ziomek and his mother went to Tarnopol where her sister Rivke lived. There they found Ziomek's father who had come to look for them. They all were herded into the Tarnopol Ghetto where they remained from 1941-43. From Tarnapol, they were taken to a concentration camp, where Ziomek's parents hid him from the Germans. After three or four months, Ziomek, his father, and mother somehow escaped. They paid a Christian named Stanislavski to hide them in the attic above his pig pen, together with four other people. They could neither stand nor shower; rats crawled over them and they subsisted on dried corn which they softened with snow. The Hammers lived there for nine months. One night in April 1944, Stanislavski asked Ziomek's father to slaughter a pig. The pig screamed loudly, as they did not know the proper way to kill it. Stanislavski told the family to drink some of the pig's blood for strength and to run and hide. Later that day, Heinrich left their hiding place and found that Stanislavski had been shot. A few days later the Hammers returned to Tarnopol where they were liberated. Ziomek's parents decided to return to Uhzedov to recover coins and other valuables that had been hidden with neighbors. They managed to retrieve their valuables but were caught and murdered. Ziomek waited several days for them to return before learning what had happened. For the next few years he lived with his cousin and uncle and, during that time, he attended a Catholic school for about a year and a half. Then his uncle was incarcerated. Ziomek was taken by Jewish soldiers from the Brigade to a Jewish orphanage in Krakow, where he remained for two weeks. He was then transported, along with other children, to Bad Reichenhall, a displaced persons' camp in Germany. He lived on a Zionist hachsharot, and in 1947 he was sent with a group of children to Palestine on board the Exodus. After the ship was forcibly returned to Europe, Ziomek lived in the Poppendorf and Emden displaced persons' camps before immigrating permanently to Israel in 1948 on the Aliya Dalet. Before leaving Europe all the children were given new Hebrew names, and Ziomek became Shlomo HaMeiri. Years later, he met another holocaust survivor, Tziporah, on a kitbbutz. They married and had two children together.