We remember Holocaust survivor Samuel Harris, 90

USC Shoah Foundation honors the memory of Samuel Harris, born Szlamek Rzeznik in May 1935. His story of survival and will as a youth during the Holocaust continues to inspire all who hear it that, as he said, “the human spirit is more powerful than anything on earth.” He was 90.

For the latter years of his life, Sam acted as president emeritus of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, and gave engaging talks on the content of his book, Sammy: Child Survivor of the Holocaust. One of his final projects with the USC Shoah Foundation, after first donating his testimony in 1996, was his work on interactive biographies (Dimensions in Testimony), where he was interviewed and filmed to create an interactive educational experience that will allow future generations to actually speak with and listen to his life experiences and his memories of the Holocaust. In this sense, his story will live on, in his voice, for many years to come.

The USC Shoah Foundation greatly appreciates Sam’s willingness and openness throughout the interview process, of which he once noted the importance: “The reason I’ve wanted to do this is...there’s words going around the world that [the Holocaust] never happened, and that hurts me, particularly since I was there when it happened. Having said that, and having gone through the flames of the war and being here today, I would like to tell people ahead that life...the human spirit is more powerful than anything on earth. The need to survive, the need for right to beat might. As long as this human spirit and love for human democracy, survival [is around], this world will be around for a long time. We should fight and have it go in that direction.”

Sam grew up in Demblin, Poland. He was the youngest of seven siblings, born to Shmuel Rzeznik, a Torah scribe, and Sheva Rzeznik. In his testimony, given to the USC Shoah Foundation in 1996, Sam described a very calm early childhood :”I remember playing on the streets, running around with kids...The town had a river going through it and once in a while there was flooding. I remember running around with my shoes off, splashing in the water.I remember my little town. I was surrounded by Jews only as a little kid...I remember Passover, learning the four questions in Hebrew, father leaning back on the pillow like a king. I remember it used to last a long time.”

For Sam’s family, the first sign of trouble was the disruptive sounds of airplanes and shooting overhead one night, when Nazi soldiers took out the little airport in their town, and then the tanks, motorcycles and machine guns that invaded his town one day when he was at a neighbor’s house.

Sam spoke of his various escapes from death during this time in his interview, and credited one person with his survival – his sister Rosa, who worked tirelessly throughout the Holocaust to save Sam’s other sister, Sara, and brother, David. He lost track of his parents after soldiers either killed or sent most of his relatives away in cattle cars to Treblinka, but was able to stay with his sister in some capacity all through the war.

In his interview, Sam noted that he always had a very specific feeling through all of his suffering: “Throughout it all, I did feel something, I felt that I was going to be alright. I always had that feeling.”

The second Nazi invasion of his town sent Sam and his remaining family running away from the town, hiding in a farmhouse and waiting for Rosa to come around to sneak them food. After some time, she organized places for her siblings to stay and began working at the airfield in her town while living at a camp, hiding Sam and their other sister. After some time, they were deported from the camp to Tschenstochau, where Harris and four other children were able to survive as long as they remained unseen. They hid under beds, stole food, and dealt with lice and fleas.

Eventually, in early 1945, Sam’s camp was liberated by the Russians. After feeling unwelcome back in their hometown, Rosa sent Sara and Sam to an orphanage in Lublin, and herself left for Vienna with her husband, always promising to return for her young siblings. And she did, less than a year later, having saved up enough money to bribe some Russian soldiers to take her family to Vienna, where Sam learned to speak German, finally started attending regular schooling.

To provide her brother and sister with a better life, Rosa sent them to America, where Sam was adopted by Ellis Harris, a pediatrician, and Harriet Golden Harris. They had a daughter, Sue, who he was raised alongside. His sister, Sara, was adopted by another family.

In his testimony, Sam spoke at length of their idyllic home in America: “A little dog greeted me – he was to be my dog eventually. I was led upstairs into a room, which was for the first time my own room. It was beautiful with trees all around.”

In Northbrook, Illinois, Sam worked hard at his elementary education and was socially accepted. He later attained a political science degree from Grinnell College. After working for some time at an insurance company, he met his wife Dede, who he would always describe as “wonderful, outstanding, the best thing that happened in my whole life.”

In 1963, they had a daughter, Julie: “I was just in heaven, to see an offspring. I was ecstatic and there was this beautiful gorgeous girl with blue eyes and she was mine and my wife’s.” Later, they had a son, David, with whom Sam was able to do a lot of things he’d never been able to do as a child, disrupted by the Holocaust and the war.

Eventually, Sam became involved in his community as president of the United Way in Northbrook and president emeritus of the Illinois Holocaust Museum, which he remained faithful to until his final days, able to turn a very painful childhood into a new, optimism-and-hope-filled life: “When I was a little younger, somewhere along the way I heard that everything happens for the best. Since a child, I knew that everything didn’t happen for the best so I changed my philosophy around and changed it to ‘make the best out of everything.’ And this is what I try to do in my life and it has helped me immensely – make the best out of everything.”