Solomon, Helene, Roger Damm

My Holocaust Family Story – Saundra Matlin

My mother, Helene Schuman, born in 1914, in Joslo, Poland was the youngest of five children, three girls and two boys. Her father, Rueben, died when she was three months old. Her mother, Bertha (Blima), born in 1884, moved to Metz, France where she raised the five children.

My father, Solomon Damm (Sam) was born in Bochnia, Poland in 1905. He had twin brothers, Zalman and Nathan. In 1924 he left Poland and went to Amsterdam to learn the art of diamond cutting. He never again saw his father and his brothers and only saw his mother once, in 1934. His mother, father, brothers and all other family were killed during the Holocaust.

My brother, Roger, was born in France in December of 1938 and came to the United States with my mother soon after World War II ended in Europe when he was five. My father came to the United States one year before the end of the war.

The story of how these three people survived the Holocaust is truly remarkable but is one of many such similar stories. I hope this story helps my grandchildren have a greater appreciation for what our family went through and the heroism their great grandparents exhibited in order to survive.

After my parents married in March, 1937 they lived in Metz where my brother was born. Under the Vichy government my father was arrested because he was a foreign born Jew. He was sent to a French labor camp. My mother and brother had to leave Metz shortly thereafter because my mother had a bicycle accident with a pushcart vendor and he threatened to file a police report. At that time my mother and brother were using false documents that said the family name was Delcour and they were Catholic. She could not risk having the police discover she was living under a false name. A plan was devised to leave the country.

They left Metz and lived for short periods of time in various small towns in France until my mother was able to connect with a farmer whose farm was on the French/Swiss border. Sometime in 1943 on a dark and cloudy night the farmer smuggled them and my nine year old cousin, Roland, my mother’s sister’s child, across the border into Switzerland. The farmer was given half of a French Franc bill with instructions to deliver it to Roland’s mother. That bill when matched to the other half was the signal the crossing had been successful.

Once in Switzerland my mother told the Swiss authorities her story and presented them with both her real and forged French documents. A few years ago, we received sixty pages of documents from Switzerland relating the experience of my mother, brother and cousin Roland.

The Swiss placed my mother and brother in an internment camp and my cousin Roland in a hospital because he had serious kidney issues. That was the reason he escaped with my mother and brother. They could not bring him to a French doctor for fear the doctor might notify the authorities he was Jewish. Circumcision was not the norm for Christians in 1930’s Europe. His mother gave him to my mother and prayed they would successfully escape from France.

Once safely in Switzerland my mother could not bear staying in the camp so she hired herself out a Swiss family as a maid and placed my brother in a Catholic convent under the false French documents saying his name was Roger Delcour. Each week she visited him and brought bread smothered in butter so she would be comfortable thinking he was receiving enough nourishment. For almost all of his life he could not bear to eat bread and butter.

Meanwhile, my father escaped three times from the French labor camp. The first two times he escaped he was quickly captured and brought back. He had no idea why when captured he was not killed. The third time he escaped in 1943, he was successful. That escape is a story of great courage and chutzpah.

He was dressed in the labor camp uniform and was walking down a back country road when he came upon a young German soldier out on patrol. You would think the normal thing to do would be to run away as fast as possible. My father did exactly the opposite. He ran towards the soldier and in perfect German (my father spoke many languages fluently) started yelling for help. He then proceeded to explain to the soldier in German that he was a German businessman who had been attacked by someone wearing these clothes. The attacker took his clothes, his identity papers and his money. The soldier must have believed him because he gave my father a cigarette, told him not to worry and explained that a half a kilometer down the road there was a German outpost. If he went to the outpost the soldiers there would help him. My father thanked the soldier and went down the road towards the outpost while the soldier went in the opposite direction.

As soon as the soldier was out of site my father went into the woods until nightfall. Once it was dark, he made his way around the outpost. His hope was to find his brother-in-law, my mother’s brother Bernard, who was in the French Resistance. He did find my Uncle Bernard and thus began the next stage of his journey to freedom.

The Resistance gave him, food, clothing and shelter for a few days and then took him on a long night time march across the Pyrenees to the border with Spain. From Spain he made his way to Portugal where he sent a telegram to my mother’s sister, my Aunt Rose, who was living in New York saying he escaped and was in Portugal. He asked about his wife and son and was told they were safe in Switzerland. Rose sent him money and he boarded a ship to Palestine, one of the last before the British embargo of Palestine.

He spent a year in Palestine and was able to secure work in Haifa as a diamond cutter. On more than one occasion he was arrested by police who thought he was Menachim Begin. From his identity papers it does appear there was a remarkable similarity in looks.

Once the family was safe work began to get everyone to the United States. Rose and my grandmother were already in New York. The Gestapo had killed my mother’s brother, Leon, Bernard was fighting in the Resistance and the other sister, Rachel, Roland’s mother was in France.

In July of 1945 my parents were reunited in New York City and in 1947 I was born. My father spent the rest of his working life as a diamond cutter on 47th Street. He died in 1990. My mother was a housewife and had a number of part time jobs over the years until her death in 1978. My brother had all of his education in the United States and in March, 1969 he along with his wife and two daughters made alliyah to Israel where he lived and worked the rest of his life until his death in July, 2020. He left behind two daughters, six grandsons and his second wife of over 25 years.

The young child who also escaped to Switzerland, my cousin Roland, became a successful and highly respected criminal defense attorney who spent over 40 years working at the Federal Defenders Fund of New York, the federal equivalent of Legal Aid, representing the poor charged with committing federal crimes. He was honored by the New York Criminal Bar Association and the New York State Bar Association and tried federal criminal cases until he was 82. There is no doubt in my mind my brilliant cousin could have been a very wealthy man but money was not what drove him. I am sure his wartime experience was a key factor in his decision to spend all of his working life doing all he could to protect those who could not protect themselves from government oppression.

I am equally sure my brother made the decision to live his life in Israel as a result of his and my parent’s wartime experience. He believed that if you are Jewish the only safe place to live was in the Jewish State.

In loving memory of my family members who perished in the Holocaust.

Michael Damm--Father of Solomon

Sara Damm---Mother of Solomon

Nathan and Zalmen Damm--Twin brothers of Solomon

All of Solomon's aunts, uncles and cousins whose names I never knew.

Leon Schuman--brother of Helene Damm