SEYMOUR POLLER

A Story of Monumental Endurance, Resilience and the Will to Survive

Seymour Poller was a Holocaust survivor and a lover of the United States of America.
As soon as he came to this country he joined the U.S. Army. He was a dedicated citizen,
father and family supporter. He worked hard so that his children could grow to be successful
individuals and passed away in 1999. His story of monumental endurance, resilience and
will to survive is inspirational and a reminder to all of us to enjoy the personal freedoms
that we have been afforded through the sacrifices of others.

My father was a very private man and seldom spoke of his experiences during the war.  I’m sure the things he lived through were very painful to speak about.    

My dear father was born Sheea Poller, the second son of Emanuel and Esther Poller, on June 26, 1927 in the town of Przemysl, Poland.  Emanuel was a small businessman who had a grocery store in a market place where farmers used to come to buy and sell products.  On the way home they purchased items to use on farm.  My father attended public school and afternoon Cheder. He was a bright young man and was loved by his parents very much. 

The situation in Poland at that time was not favorable for Jews.  Jews produced many jobs and were involved in medicine, law and all other professions, however, they were not liked by Polish and Ukrainians.  The antisemitism in Poland was visible in every phase of life.  In 1939, the situation for Jews changed.  The Germans began to invade and occupy many countries in Europe.  They signed a pact with Russia to divide Poland between the two countries. Germany would take western Poland all the way to River Sun.  The east was allocated to Russia.  The powerful German army arrived on the west side during the next few weeks.  The Russians were late to get there, and the Germans crossed the river to the other side.  In the first few days they gathered young Jew men, took them outside the city and shot them without pity.  The Jewish community was very concerned, however, the Russians arrived within the next few days and the Germans left.  On their way out of town they were screaming, “We will be back.” 

The Russians implemented their laws and many wealthy Jewish families were taken to Siberia.  The life in town settled down and children went to school, small stores opened and people went to work.  If you didn’t get involved in politics, you lived a normal life.  You got used to everything and accepted it.  Many officers in the Russian army, after they got to know you, admitted they were Jews, but did not live a Jewish lifestyle.  

One night in 1939, my father and his family heard thunder which did not stop.  They went to the window and saw the German artillery shooting over to the Russian side.  They immediately realized that they have a problem.  The war had begun.  It took only hours, and the German army took over the city.  The Russian army withdrew and many Jewish families withdrew with them.  The Germans didn’t waste time. They proved to that they don’t like Jews.  The order was given that Jews should wear an arm band with the Star of David.  They were forbidden to walk on the sidewalks; only in the street.  Very often they heard in the morning that some of their Jewish friends were shot, but they didn’t know why.  There was no reason for it. 

In the months to come, a ghetto was implemented under the order of the German commissioner.  Part of the city was designated as a ghetto for the Jewish population.  Anyone caught on the outside was shot.  The ghetto was divided between working people and non-working people.  Young people mostly made up the work force.  They were involved in doing all jobs necessary for work both inside of the ghetto and outside as well.  One group of men was working on a big project, taking apart a building that was bombed by the German air force.  Besides having many responsibilities and burdens, their biggest worry was what would come tomorrow… who would live and who would die. 

One morning they woke up and saw that there were signs all over the ghetto that certain people of a specific age should report to one of the empty lots.  They were told that they would be resettled in the eastern part of the country and work on a farm.  People in the ghetto were satisfied that they would be able to live and work.  In the morning, families could be seen walking with bundles and packages to the lot.  My father’s parents spread a sheet out on the floor, placed all of their immediate needs in it and joined the people reporting to the designated lot.  My father, Sheea, who was only 14 years old at the time, joined his parents where there were thousands of people assembled, hoping for the best.  At noon, my father’s mother told him to try to escape.  His older brother, my Uncle Henry, was waiting for him a block away, and he soon came.  The assembled people at noon were moved to the railway station.  In the evening, my father and uncle went to say goodbye to them.  In a crying voice, their mother asked Uncle Henry to take care of his younger brother.  In the morning, they were gone.  The hope that they would go to work was a lie.  The 12,500 Jews who gathered were loaded in cattle cars and taken to a place known as Belzec, where the Germans prepared barracks with pipes and showers.  However, those showers did not produce water, but gas.  All those poor people, including children, were gassed and cremated.  This process was repeated many times.  The German goal was to make the City of Przemysl “Judenreit”, meaning “Clean of Jews”. 

A few days later, the majority of the working force were evacuated from the city.  They were taken to a place called Szapnia.  It was a large empty field surrounded by barracks which looked like an army was there before.  When they arrived, they were searched for valuables and then they were allocated a place in the barracks.  There was nothing to do there, just to wait for new orders.  Every day, German trucks used to come in, loaded up with people, and leave to an unknown destination.  Fifteen minutes later the ones who remained heard shooting; they knew the answer.  This went on for weeks.

One day, an order came and part of the camp was evacuated, including my father and uncle.  The train went west in the direction of Birkenau–Auschwitz which everyone realized, watching the passing stations.  Some of my father’s friends tore off the wires from the small windows in the cattle cars and jumped out. They were brave and took a chance.  Some got killed and some survived.  After a long journey, the train arrived at the destination. The place was Birkenau.  They were ordered to create a line and to march forward.  In front of them was standing an SS man who made the decision if they were going to live or die.  Everyone in the group approached him and reported to him what kind of profession each have.  “Heir Commandant, ich been an schneider (tailor)” or “Heir Commandant, ich been an tischler (carpenter).”  My father was in front of my uncle and he reported that his profession was a tischler.  The SS officer pointed to the right which meant that he would go to work.   My Uncle Henry said the same thing and was designated to work.  Whoever approached and was pointed to the left, that poor man was designated to die.  He was taken to the gas chambers and then cremated. 

The working group of individuals created two rows and marched forward, surrounded by SS men with rifles and bayonets.  One of them touched my father’s arm with the bayonet.  He did not bleed but his arm became infected immediately.  There were no doctors and no one to complain to.  They did their best and marched forward.  The first thing to do was to take a shower.  The shower was lukewarm and then they were chased outside into the dark and cold.  Standing outside naked, they formed and huddled in groups of four or five to stay warm.  After a few hours, they were led to another barrack and received clothes-a jacket, pants, cap and a pair of shoes.  The shoes were made from wood with just a hole to put the foot in.  They were then led to another numbered barrack with a block number and were given soup and a ration of bread.  In the morning, the group was woken up, assembled outside and led to another block where they were branded with the tattoo.  When Sheea approached, his arm was discolored and could not get tattooed on left side.  He was one of the very few who had his tattoo on the right.  His number was 161516.  My Uncle Henry was tattooed right before him and was number 161515.  From now on, their name was not Poller, rather their name was the number on their arm. 

From there the group went to work.  They were led to a pile of stones and heavy rocks.  They were supposed to pick up rocks, carry them approximately one mile away and throw them in a designated place.  They were building a new road.  Then they went back and did the same thing, but they had a terrible time.  The shoes they had rubbed off the skin on their feet, causing them to bleed.  The pain was unbearable.  They didn’t have any fabrics or paper to wrap their feet.  Many of them just fell and they were never seen again.  Some members of the group found a piece of paper which they wrapped around their feet and did their best to survive.  This was practiced for days and days.  Every day, new people arrived in Birkenau and filled the barracks.  This was the camp for men only.  In days to come, and maybe a few weeks later, a heavyset SS man came with a truck, pulled up to the barrack and ordered them to get on the truck.  The SS man got an order from the commandant to take a number of prisoners-for this is what they were-for his own needs.  The truck left and after a short time they found themselves in another camp surrounded by brick walls, with soldiers on each corner.  They were allocated barracks where they slept and ate. Soon they found out that they would be working in a coal mine.   The place was called Fiersten Gruber (Gruber is a mine).  Their shift was allocated to work at night.  My father and uncle belonged to that group. 

They were each given a lantern and at six o’clock in evening, the group of prisoners marched to the coal mine, surrounded by soldiers as they arrived.  They were taken down into the mine by elevator where they met their foreman.  The foremen were experienced German coal mine workers.  Each one of them received a group of prisoners which followed him.  Their responsibility was to dynamite the coal.  The prisoners’ job was to load the coal on a special wagon and those wagons were taken by elevators upstairs.  Some places in the mine were very low.  The height sometimes was only 40 inches which prevented them from standing up.  They had to work on their knees shoveling the coal into wagons.  It was always wet and raining.  The prisoners were working on their knees in water, but there was no choice; they were sent there and had to do it.  In morning at the end of their shift, the group assembled and was taken up by elevator where they were again surrounded by soldiers, and walked back to the camp.

The work was exhausting and they extremely tired.  In the camp, they would take a shower-sometimes the water was warm and sometimes cold.  Then they received coffee and a ration of bread and then went to sleep.  This repeated every day.  There was a small hospital in the camp in case anyone got sick.  They would rest for a night or a day and then went back to work.  The inmates were always under pressure not knowing what the next hour would bring.  There was a policy that they all knew about.  Every Wednesday, a truck came from Birkenau or Auschwitz and took back dead bodies, sick prisoners, those who could not work, or anyone who could not live up to their responsibility.  The prisoners would stay and watch from a distance saying goodbye to them, knowing full well that they would never see them again. 

The discipline was very severe.  There was a case when the group of prisoners came back from work, and one or two of the men were missing.  It was a possibility that they were killed in the mine and no one knew about it.  The group’s commandant was always counting if all of the men returned.  If any were missing, he counted from one to ten and every tenth man stood forward.  By the end of counting he had sometimes four to six men standing forward.  The rest were dismissed to the barracks.  The ones left standing faced soldiers holding rifles and were shot.  This was a signal to the remaining group members that if it happened again any one of them may be next.  Once my father told me that they saw hanging bodies.  His group was assembled before six men who were standing on a table. The guards put a rope around their neck and removed the table, leaving them hanging dead.  My father and his mates were told that those men were building a tunnel to escape.  They were told next that these things were not being done there. 

There was a time when my father got very sick.  My Uncle Henry and a friend were able to take him to the small hospital where they placed him in a bunk bed very close to the ceiling, not to be seen.  He was laying there for a few days.  No one from hospital knew he was there.  Once a day my Uncle Henry brought him a piece of bread and coffee and then ran to work.  Fortunately, my father recovered and went back to work.  The life was difficult in this camp.  Thousands of their friends and fellow prisoners perished and their bodies were taken to Birkenau and cremated.  Sometimes they would wonder why they even lived.  They were being punished and the only reason was because they were born Jewish. 

The month was December 1944, and there was talk in the camp that the Russians were not far away, and they might be liberated.  An unfortunate incident befell my father at that time.  That month, almost on the last day of their work, Sheea was working in the coal mine and was struck by an oncoming coal cart which broke his wrist.  They could not report it to the commandant so they tried to hide his injury.  My uncle and his friends took my father’s shirt sleeve and covered his arm, making believe nothing happened. The group was taken by elevator to the upper level and marched to the camp.  My father was taken to the hospital in a quiet way, and the Jewish doctor put a splint on his arm and bandaged it.  They again put the sleeve over his arm and went back to the barracks. 

In a day or two, there was an order given to evacuate the camp.  The month was December, the weather was cold and the snow was about a meter high.  The prisoners assembled and were ready to march.  The soldiers who were on duty had lots of bags which were loaded on wagons and the inmates became the horses to pull the wagons.  To pull a wagon in the snow was almost impossible.  It took the strength of many men. Some fell and were shot.  Walking through the snow was hard by itself.  After a few days, they found themselves in Gliwitz.  Walking in the street, my father was exhausted.  He asked to rest for a bit, but his older brother would not let him.  My Uncle Henry and a friend took him under the arms and dragged him to the railway station.  He would not let him rest because he knew what had happened to others.  They were shot and that was their end. 

At the railway station, they boarded the cattle cars for a long journey to the Town of Northausen, a camp named Dora.  During the trip, the cattle cars were open and it was very cold.  Many prisoners died in the cars.  In the morning, the train stopped and the prisoners would take all bodies and throw them out of the cars, sometimes taking their clothes because they didn’t need them anymore.  Another group of men was taking those bodies, dragging them to the first car, and throwing them there.  When they arrived at their destination, they took the bodies and dragged them to the crematorium.  If the crematorium was too busy, they piled up the corpses in an empty lot, poured gasoline on them and set them on fire.  This camp was in a tremendous valley surrounded by hills and mountains.  Inside the hills were factories for producing weapons and ammunition.  For the newcomers there was no work.  They assembled in the morning and stayed there for hours in the rain or snow until they were let go to the barracks.  This was another place that many of them never made it out of.

At the beginning of April, 1945, the prisoners were again taken to a railroad station and transported to Bergen-Belsin concentration camp.  Bergen-Belsin was another graveyard.  Wherever you looked, you could see dead bodies piled up.  One morning, my father and uncle woke up, looked through the window and saw English troops who liberated them from their final concentration camp.  This was the day they were born again.  They felt free.  They would be able to leave the camp and go wherever they pleased.  A few days after liberation, two American pilots came to see the camp.  My father approached them, and wrote a short letter to their uncle who lived in Scranton, PA, telling him that the two sons of his sister Esther survived, and they were going back home to see if anyone else in the family survived.  As children, my father and Uncle Henry memorized the name and address of their uncle, their mother’s brother, Max Poller, in America.  Their mother wisely insisted that the boys remember the name and address in case they had to use it someday. 

After a couple of weeks, a Soviet truck came into the camp and suggested that Henry and Sheea go back home, and they would help them get there.  The two brothers took them at their word and left the camp with the Soviet soldiers.  However, the soldiers did not take them home; they took them to an army camp where they tried to make soldiers out of them.  After a couple of days, my father, uncle and a friend were able to escape and decided to go on their own.  A few hours later they were caught by the Russian police and arrested.  The three men were extremely disappointed and depressed.  They appeared before the judge and explained to him that they were liberated from a concentration camp where they had spent the last few years and asked him to let us go free.  With the help of a Jewish Russian translator, they were let go, went straight to a railroad station and decided to go by train east to Poland. 

The train at that time moved very slowly and the men didn’t have any food. They passed through one town that was completely abandoned and the houses were destroyed by the bombs.  The three men took a chance and went into the town to find some food.  They saw a sack of potatoes on the second floor of a house that was cut in half.  They found a long stick and were able to pull the potatoes down.  Sheea, Henry and their friend took the potatoes to the railway station and had enough food for days to come.  After a long journey, the three arrived in their hometown of Przemysl. They were met at the station by one of our friends, whose name was Billim Kern.  He invited them to his home and gave them a bed to sleep in.  To their disappointment, my father and uncle did not find anyone from their family.  They all perished in the Shoa. 

After a couple of weeks, my father and uncle left on their way to Germany with the hope that they could contact their family again and be able to go to America.  On the way to Germany they stopped in Gleivitz.  Henry and Sheea rented an apartment and lived there for maybe a year.  In the meantime, they made contact with their family in America and waited for the proper papers to leave Germany and emigrate to America.  After a while, the two brothers left Gleivitz and moved to Munich.  They rented a room and waited patiently, got in touch with their family, and received immigration papers. 

In June of 1947, the two brothers arrived in New York as very happy individuals.  At the pier, their Uncle Max and Cousin Bertha were waiting for them with open arms. They took my father and uncle to Scranton, PA, gave them a place to stay, financial support and encouragement to build a new life.  In Scranton, Henry and Seymour, the name given to my father in America, had many relatives who were very kind and supportive.  Soon, they were in touch some of their friends who lived in New York.  My father left Scranton and moved to New York, got a job in a fabric store, and made a future out of it.  Uncle Henry joined him a year or so later and worked in the same corporation as he did. 

In 1949, the two brothers decided to go in business for themselves.  They bought a small store and were helped financially by the family, who helped pay for it.  In 1951, Seymour was drafted into the army, and appeared before the medical commission.  He did not tell them that his left arm was permanently injured.  He was very pleased and honored to serve in the army.  He began his service, but almost after a year he could not handle heavy weapons any longer.  His hand swelled up at which point he told them his history.  After serving a year in the army, my father was honorably discharged, came home and joined his Uncle Henry in the business. 

In 1952, Seymour married Rosalind Lavene, and started to build a family and life of their own. Life was difficult, but it was beautiful to be free to plan their future.  After a few years, Seymour and Rosalind Poller bought a home in Clifton, NJ, where they raised my brother and me.  My parents were always very supportive and gave us the best life and education possible.  Thanks to them, we have become successful professionals.  My father and mother contributed to both Jewish and non-Jewish causes, supported the State of Israel, the local Jewish community, and their congregation which was very important to them.  They taught us to be loyal citizens of our country.  My father’s greatest pleasure was to visit his grandchildren, take them shopping and spend time with them.  Due to his past experience, my father was extremely loyal to this country for giving him a chance to live in freedom in a land of justice. He passed away at seventy-two years old, leaving behind his wife, Rosalind, my brother Richie, myself, and at the time, two grandchildren.

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