Samuel Pisar

Samuel Pisar was born in Białystok, Poland, to Jewish parents David and Helaina Pisar. His parents and younger sister Frieda were murdered in the Holocaust. He was sent to Majdanek, Bliżyn, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Dachau. At the end of the war, he escaped during a death march.

About Samuel Pisar in brief

Summary Samuel PisarSamuel Pisar was born in Białystok, Poland, to Jewish parents David and Helaina Pisar. His parents and younger sister Frieda were murdered in the Holocaust. He was sent to Majdanek, Bliżyn, Auschwitz, Sachsenhausen, Oranienburg, Dachau and ultimately to the Engelberg Tunnel near Leonberg. At the end of the war, he escaped during a death march. After the liberation, Pisar spent a year and a half in the American occupation zone of Germany, engaging in black marketeering with fellow survivors.

Pisar’s memoir, Of Blood and Hope, in which he tells the story of how he survived the Holocaust, received the Present Tense literary award in 1981. He wrote a narration based on his experiences and his anger at God, for Leonard Bernstein’s Symphony No. 3.