Sam Weinreb (z”l)

April 5, 1926 – January 15, 

“My number was A4659, I was told that I will no longer need to remember my name”

Sam Weinreb grew up in Bratislava, Czechoslovakia and was a teenager during World War II. One day he came back from a Bar Mitzvah lesson to find his home locked and his entire family gone. They had been taken away by the Nazis and he never saw them again. Sam spent the next two years living on the streets begging for work and food. As a last resort he turned himself over to the authorities who immediately placed him under arrest and sent him to prison, where he suffered greatly. Eventually he was deported to Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp where his identity was forcibly replaced with a number tattooed on his arm.

Sam was able to escape during the infamous death marches out of Auschwitz where so many others could not. Soon after, he was rescued by the Russians who found him unconscious in the forest. Sam came to the United States after the war and started a new life in McKeesport, PA living with distant cousins. There he worked in the family businesses, as a jeweler and a watchmaker. He married a young woman, Goldie, who he knew as a child. They had two children together.

“It was the same officer from the embassy. He put his arms around me and said, “Son, you’re going to America.” I asked, “When am I going?” and he said, “Right now.”