Sam Eker

My name is Solomon “Sam” Eker. I was born on March 15, 1920 in Poland. I was one of six children. I had four brothers- Avram, Gabriel, Mendel, and Leib Meyer- and one sister, Chana. My father was Yechiel-Michel Eker and my mother was Mindle Eker.

We lived in Warsaw in a three-story building. We lived on the second floor with two bedrooms and a kitchen. Our neighborhood was mainly Jewish.

My family was religious we went to shul every Saturday. We kept kosher in our home. We celebrated Shabbat every weekend. Friday nights we had fish for dinner and observed Shabbat. We celebrated all the Jewish holidays. As a young teen, I belonged to a Zionist organization.

I finished school in seventh grade and then I started to work. My brother and sister manufactured leather gloves. My other brother Gabriel was working in a factory that made food coloring. I was working in Warsaw for Mr. Rosenberg. Most of the times, I was late, but the boss appreciated that I was a hard worker.

It was not easy to be a Jew in Warsaw. In 1937 anti-semetism started and was very bad. The Poles would stand in front of Jewish stores and tell people not to buy from Jews. One time I went to the store to buy a bottle of soda and a man grabbed my Yiddish hat and ran away. I started to cry and went home to my house. I told my father what happen. In general it was not good for the Jewish people. Sadly, around this same time, my father passed away.

When war broke out on September 1, 1939, planes started to fly over Warsaw. The panic was so large that people started to run. I was on the street and wanted to go upstairs to my family. But my older brothers Avram and Gabriel came down to me and in a panic told me that we had to leave immediately. I never even said goodbye to the rest of my family. We followed most of the people walking east to Russia. We walked about 100 kilometers. The German airplanes flew over us and they shot at us. My brother Avram turned back because he was afraid of the Russians. Somehow Gabriel and I managed to get to Russia. The Russians sent my brother Gabreil to one place and me to another.

I was in Kolkhoz- a place where you work in the field, you get food and then you give all the money to the Russians. I stayed with a Russian couple and had to work in the field with them. I planted potatoes and tomatoes. After a week in this house, an official from the Kolkhoz asked what I wanted to do and took me to Minsk. In Minsk I looked for work. A Russian Jewish girl watching me asked me who I was and what I was doing. I told her I was looking for work and she took me to her parents, and they said I could stay with them. The parents gave me a paper that confirmed I had a place to live and therefore I could be given a job at a factory. I worked at the factory for several months.

One day when I went into work, someone told me that my brother Gabriel was there earlier trying to find me to take me back home to Warsaw. I had missed him and didn’t get to go back with him. Eventually, I decided I wanted to go back to Poland. I traveled back not to Warsaw, but to Lvov, to see what the general conditions were in Poland. I went to Kowel, and found out that Jews were being sent to forced labor and I decided not to go back to Warsaw. I lived temporarily in the Synagogue in Kowel. After a short while, I decided to travel back to Minsk. It took three and half days to travel there because the trains were breaking down. When I came back to Minsk, some of my friends were still working at my old job and they were upset that I left to go back to Poland, and told me I would be arrested if they found I had returned. I couldn’t get a new job in Minsk so I went to a small factory in Borisov. My job was to carry lumber from one machine to the next. Then the head of the factory asked me if I could learn to work the machines. I was a quick learner and I became an expert on these machines. They put my name up to show that the newcomer from Poland was such a great worker. Eventually they moved us to a factory deeper in the country of Russia.

I followed the news of what was occurring in Poland. I learned about the Ghettos and the concentration camps. I learned about the Polish-Russian army. I decided I wanted to enlist in this army because I was so distraught about what was happening to my family. The second day after I enlisted, an officer passed by the line up and picked up ten people from line, including me. I was chosen to go to school to learn how to be a doctor in the field. I received three medals. For six months, I attended school and then was sent to the Fourth Division where I was in charge of teaching eight soldiers the same information I had learned about how to be a doctor on the field. At the end of 1944, we dug trenches outside Warsaw. We received an order from Stalin to go from Praga to Warsaw and Warsaw was burning from the Germans. I decided to locate my old house. Unfortunately, my house was in ruins. We walked to Lubin as we needed to watch the city of Lubin. In Lubin, I met man who told me what he believed happen to my immediate family. My family was in the Ghetto and sent to Auschwitz and killed.

Shortly after hearing this news about my family, I was hit by sniper fire near my shoulder. I spent time in a hospital. After getting released from the hospital I went to live a building run by a Yiddish committee in Poland. I started to look for my family to see if someone miraculously survived. I traveled to Landsberg displaced person’s camp to see if I could find out any information about my family. Sadly, I confirmed that I was the only member of my family to escape death by the Nazis.

I met my wife Sara Feldman in Landsberg. We got married in Buchenwald and eventually gave birth to our daughter Mary. In 1949, we moved to Israel and lived there until 1952. In Israel I poured cement blocks in the searing heat during the day, and patrolled the Negev with other guards in the evening.

Eventually we decided to move to Toronto, Canada to be closer to our remaining family. We gave birth to our second child, Harv in Canada. Within two years of working all hours in Canada, I bought a house for my family. We rented out every room but the one that we lived in. My life was meager, but my dreams were big. I started my own business as a carpenter/contractor, which evolved from basement renovations to land development. I built many beautiful homes over my long career, including the dream house I built for my wife and family.

My words of advice are you need to take chances! I want to tell everyone, including all my children and grandchildren and great grandchildren not to forget what happen. We should never forget. I want everyone to know what I went through. This life was not so easy. But we must never forget the past in order to prevent it from happening again.