Rochester Holocaust Survivors Archive 
Solomon Slomovic
Solomon Slomovic was born Shimshon Slomovic on December 13, 1913, in Solotvina, Czechoslovakia to Chaim and Edis Slomovic. He and his twin sister Ruchel were the youngest of their seven children. Chaim’s first wife had died in the childbirth of their second child. From that marriage Solomon had one stepbrother Benjamin who immigrated to America with Solomon's oldest sister when they were both in their early teens. When Solomon was three years old, his father Chaim was murdered by local Gentile men during a pogrom in their town of Solotvina. He was tied and dragged by his beard through the street by a horse until he died.
When he turned thirteen, Solomon was sent to Hungary to become an apprentice in a bakery there. He returned to Solotvina at eighteen, a master baker and joined his brother Froyim in opening their own bakery. Their mother Edis died the following year of cancer. When he was twenty-one, Solomon married a local girl named Shaindel. They had a son Chaim and a daughter Edis, both named for his parents. He never saw their third child, unnamed, born after the Nazis confiscated his bakery and arrested him and put him in a series of labor camps. His home was tak over by his non-Jewish neighbors.
Solomon escaped from his last labor camp only to be captured by Russian soldiers who forced such Jews to act as human shields, standing unarmed in the front as they face the advancing Nazis troops. Miraculously, he survived. Later he was given a uniform and a rife and enlisted to serve in a Czech unit headed by General Svaboda fighting against the Nazis. When on leave, Solomon returned home, hoping to find his wife and children. He found his family home destroyed, but in the ruins he retrieved one picture of his family taken when he was around nine. He also found an old picture postcard with a New York City return address from his step brother Benjamin Slomovic and sister Yolan (Yetta Rausch).
Sara Slomovic
Sara Slomovic was born Sara Herskovic Raismovic on May 28, 1928, in Solotvina, Czechoslovakia, to Dovid and Matil Herskovic Raismovic. The oldest of six children, she had four brothers: Sander, Zalman Moishe, Yankev Leib, Yossi and a sister Udi. Her father owned horses and a wagon used to transport lumber from the forest. Her maternal grandfather Alexsander Herskovic, a builder, constructed the family home for his daughter Matil with rooms upstairs for rentals.
In 1939, when Sara was eleven years old, children who had been her lifelong friends turned on her outside their school, yelling and hitting her. When she tried to enter her school, these friends pointed to the sign posted on the school’s front door proclaiming, “Dogs and Jews may not enter here”. In 1941 the Nazis rounded up all able-bodied Jewish boys and men, including her father, for transport to forced labor camps in Siberia. They were never seen again. Shortly thereafter, all remaining Jews were forced to move into Sara’s neighborhood which became a ghetto where they were starved and brutalized. Soldiers assigned Sara to work, cleaning the local bakery. To keep the family from starving, every day she would hide the crumbs in her pockets with whatever flour she swept off the floors. These ingredients helped supplement her mother’s cooking at night.
In May 1944 Sara, now 16, was loaded onto a windowless cattle car together with her mother, her four younger brothers and baby sister to be deported to Auschwitz. After traveling for three days and nights, packed tightly in standing room only without food, water, or sanitation, they arrived at the camp. Those still alive were hustled quickly off the train, trying unsuccessfully to avoid the many dead bodies. Guards with rifles drawn and vicious dogs, lined the Jews up into columns for a selection by the notorious Dr. Mengele Sara held her baby sister Udi while her mother Matil carried her youngest brother Yossi and kept the other three boys by her side. Matil quickly noticed that old and weak people, young children and mothers with babies were sent one way while the stronger men and women were sent in the other direction. Matil pulled Udi from Sara’s arms. When Sara resisted, she slapped Sara and shoved her away from the family. Matil’s act of bravery saved Sara’s life. Her mother and five siblings went straight to the gas chambers. It happened so quickly. Throughout her life Sara was tormented, blaming herself for not holding her sister tighter and not remaining with her family. It took years for her to understand her Mother’s actions. But still her nightmares persisted.
In Auschwitz, Sara had to push huge wooden carts loaded with dead bodies of concentration camp inmates to pits or furnaces. On one occasion, she was not able to get out of the way of another cart fast enough. It ran over her foot and she fell to the ground in pain. A guard shot her in the leg, but luckily the bullet went right through her calf and out.
Sometimes, for their amusement, the female guards would make the women walk on their knees across sharp rocks, carrying a heavy rock over their head, to piles of big rocks on another side of the camp. Once on the other side, the women were ordered to put their rock on the pile, pick up another rock and carry it over their head back to the starting pile. Once, as punishment for dropping a rock, she was hit in the face with a shovel knocking out all her top and bottom front teeth.
Later Sara was selected to work in the Macholtz Linen Factory in Bruntol, a sub camp of Auschwitz. Every day the small work of women workers were marched to Bruntol and back. As the smallest and skinniest of the group, Sara’s job was to crawl between the gears to thread the giant machines.
Despite her size, Sara proved herself strong, determined and defiant. She would climb through a fence to the camp kitchen to steal scraps of food, mostly root vegetable peels, to feed herself and her starving bunkmates. On one occasion she was caught near her barrack and hit over the head with a pick ax. Left for dead, she was rescued by a group of Czech women in her bunk. When the guards left, the women dragged her inside and bandaged her head with scraps of their clothing. They kept her alive so she could continue working.
One day Sara, working near the train tracks where new arrivals were herded off the cattle cars for a selection, she was assigned to gather up the piles of personal possessions: clothes, glasses, suitcases that the arrivals had left and sort them. An old religious man made a fuss about giving up his tallis (prayer shawl) and was shot. When the tallis was thrown into a pile, Sara retrieved it, hiding it under her clothes. When she left Auschwitz a year later, she still had it wrapped around her waist.
Many years later, her daughter Martha discovered the bullet-ridden, blood-stained garment when she helped move her mother out of her home in Syracuse, NY, to live with her in Rochester. Sara refused to give up the tallis and resisted moving out of the house, with no explanation other than that she had to protect the tallis. She would not leave it behind. Martha brought Sara to her Rabbi Shaya Kilimnick. He saw Sara alone and in his confidence she shared the origin of that tallis. He promised to keep the tallis safe in the aron kodesh, the holy ark that holds Torah scrolls, in the chapel of Beth Sholom. He promised Sara that when her time came, the tallis would be buried with her in sanctified ground.
Near the end of the war, the German guards forced Sara and the remaining prisoners on a death march to evade being caught. But as soon as the German guards realized that the Russian army was about to overtake them, they dispersed, leaving Sara and the few surviving Czech women on their own. Once realizing they were free, they began the arduous walk back to their home towns. Unfortunately along the way, two girls died from typhus and another from overeating the rations that the liberating army gave them. Sara made it to her home town only to find that her non-Jewish neighbors had occupied her family’s home. They threatened to kill her if she didn’t leave. She ran away, seeking relief in a soup kitchen in town run by the United Nations Refugee Agency (UNRA) for survivors. There she was surprised to find Solomon Slomovic, her former next door neighbor and her father’s best friend, alive and wearing a Russian army uniform. He had escaped from a Nazi labor camp only to be captured by Russian soldiers who had forced him along with other unarmed Jews they caught to be human shields, in front of the advancing troops. Miraculously he survived and, finally, was issued a rifle to fight with the Russian army against the Nazis. Whenever on leave, Solomon would return home, hoping to find his wife and children. Instead, he found his home destroyed. Among the ruins he discovered a family photo taken when he was nine as well as an old picture postcard that had a New York City return address and the names of his step brother Benjamin and sister Yolan (Yetta Rausch). Both had left before the war and emigrated when they were in their teens.
At the UNRA soup kitchen he found Sara, without teeth, starved and alone. He gave her all the money he had and found her a safe place to live. Hoping she could fix her teeth and regain her strength, he would return to Solotvina on leave to supply her with items to sell on the black market. With any money left over, he would advertise throughout Europe, hoping to find word about his wife, children and Sara’s father. Sara, not wanting to cause Solomon more pain, had, for many years, kept secret that she had seen his first wife, Shaindy and their three children during the selections in Auschwitz in the line to go to the gas chambers. Finally after given up all hope of finding his wife, children, or her father, Solomon asked Sara to marry him.
Their Jewish wedding ceremony was held in the Kazinczy Synagogue in Budapest on October 13, 1945. He was 32 years old and she was 17.
Meanwhile Solomon was awarded the Zachabros medal of honor for his bravery and was discharged from the Czech unit of the Russian army. In gratitude, the Russians also gave Solomon a confiscated bakery as compensation for the bakery own by his older brother Froyim and himself that was seized by the Nazis in 1941.
Life was good. Sara and Solomon had two children, Chaim, born in 1946. and Marta in 1948.
As the family prospered, they were able to afford help for the children and house. When their town was taken over by the Hungarian Communist regime, however, Solomon foresaw trouble on the horizon. In 1948, he wrote to his step brother and sister in NYC informing them that he was the only survivor of WWII and asking for any help they could provide. They replied and began the sponsorship paperwork to bring the family to the United States. Solomon and the family arrived in the US at the end of 1949 penniless. The Hungarian government had taken their business, and they had to leave their valuables and all money except for $5.00 Their family in America sent them train tickets to go to Italy and their ship boarding passage vouchers from there to NYC, Ellis Island.
Just before getting final authorization to leave Czechoslovakia, Sara realized that she was pregnant with their third child, David. They were met by their Brooklyn family who ltook them to live on the lower East side of Manhattan over his brother-in-law, Izzy Rausch’s fur store. Solomon tried for months to secure a job as a baker but was consistently denied because he was not a member of the union. He swept streets and did menial jobs until hearing that there were non-union jobs available in Upstate NY. With the help of his step brother, he bought a Greyhound bus ticket and got to Syracuse, NY.
Speaking very poor English and sign language he somehow made his way to bakeries and one offered him a job. He worked a couple of months before he was able to send for Sara and his 3 ½ year old son Chaim, 2 ½ year old daughter Marta and newborn son David. A year later a Rochester, NY bakery owner came to Syracuse to offer Solomon a job as foreman of Godfried’s Bakery on Herman Street so the family moved to Rochester. They lived in an apartment over Byers Shoe Store on Joseph Avenue until they were able to purchase their own small three-bedroom house on Scrantom Street. Sara took in boarders to help with expenses. They were blessed with the birth of two more sons, Eddie Leon 1954 and Sander Froyim 1957. Eventually they were very proud to be able to repay every dollar Solomon owed his American family for passage and all expenses advanced in getting Sara, their two children and him to the US.
The family left Rochester for Syracuse in 1962 to work for the Snowflake Bakery in Syracuse, NY. In 1964, they opened their own bakery called Butterflake Pastry Shop in the Triphammer Shopping Center, Ithaca, NY. Sara managed the front shop six days and evenings while Solomon worked six nights a week into early afternoon in the bakery. In 1975 Solomon died of pancreatic cancer. For a while Sara moved back to Rochester, NY, and then found work as a cook in The Syracuse Country Club until she became the cook at Tau Epsilon Phi (TEP) a Jewish fraternity on Syracuse University campus. She did all the shopping and food preparation and became very close to the students. A year later she was asked to become their House Mother, running all events as well as the house business. To this day she gets cards, flowers and calls from some of “her boys” and their families.
According to her daughter, Martha, Sara is a survivor in every way. “She is always positive and has been the best blessing in my life. Her schooling ended abruptly at age of 11 and her family never knew she didn’t read Hebrew. At 65 years old, keeping it a secret until our Passover seder in 2005, when it was her turn to read from the Passover Haggadah. We discovered that she could now read Hebrew beautifully. having taken night classes in the language at Temple Adath Yeshurin.
She served on many of her synagogue’s committees and cooked for all the NCSY Youth Group events. She also sang with the Kenahora Klezmer Band.
After the last of her children were on their own, she began speaking to Hebrew School Classes sharing details of her life during the Holocaust. She catered affairs for many years for the Congregation Young Israel in Syracuse. Always positive, people are instantly comfortable in her company. She never gives up and frequently says, ‘God is good. Through my children he gave me back my four younger brothers and little sister. An excellent cook, food was her greatest expression of love and all who knew her had to eat all she prepared and then she would be happy. She would tell us not to waste time hating, but rather to celebrate freedom and cherish family!
Biographies written by Martha Slomovic Shaftel, daughter