went off in the wrong direction, following my instruc- tions. Their search, of course, was futile, because Paul Chorowski was already back inside the ghetto.” Paul Chorowski was deported from the ghetto to various concentration camps, where he suffered horri- bly. Nevertheless, he survived the Holocaust. After the war he came to the United States and raised a fine fam- ily. Today he lives in Long Island City, New York. The Bialystok ghetto was liquidated in August 1943 and Sam Solasz was finally caught and given a one-way ticket to Treblinka. Once again, knowing that he had to escape, he plunged from the railroad car in motion, rolling toward the surrounding forest where he found refuge. He left behind his parents and many of his siblings, who ultimately suffered extermination. For the next year he fought with the Russian parti- san forces, which conducted guerrilla warfare against the Nazis. On July 1, 1944, he and the others were liber- ated by the Russian Army and allowed to return to Bia- lystok. There he had to rub his eyes to make sure that what he was seeing was in fact true. The city was reduced to rubble, all of its houses and institutions razed to the ground. Everything familiar to him had gone up in smoke. The foul stench of destruction per- vaded his consciousness. The next years Mr. Solasz spent in displaced- persons camps in Germany, gradually attempting to rebuild his shattered life. He acquired experience in meat handling, formed new relationships and renewed old ones. Later survivors in the DP camps talked about emigrating to Israel, where the establishment of a Jew- ish State was in the works. In 1948 Solasz joined the Aliyah Bet, people wishing to settle in Israel, later HIRSZ FEJGIN voluntering for combat duty in the Israeli armed forces during the War of Independence. Assisted by the Government, he went into business and discovered that his father had some relatives in the United States. With the aid of HIAS, he arrived in New York in January 1951. Finding a job in the third largest meat corpora- tion, he developed an intimate knowledge of the meat- processing and packing industry and, in September 1957, founded Master Purveyors, Old Bohemian, Tem- ple Beef and S & S Meat companies. These firms pro- vide meat to the largest hotels, restaurants and institutions in the United States and abroad. Asa result of his sharp mind, his retentive memory and his ambi- tious drive, Sam Solasz has become a_ prosperous entrepreneur. Yet business is not Mr. Solasz’s only interest. An extremely charitable and hard-working individual for Jewish communal causes, he serves as the President of the Bialystoker Center and Home for the Aged. Before that he held several other important leadership posi- tions within this institution. Mr. Solasz married Rose Cohen on June 29, 1957. Her parents, Sephardic Jews, were born in Salonika, Greece. Mrs. Solasz was born and raised in New York along with two brothers. Sam and Rose Solasz have three children, Diane, Scott and Mark. | Sam Solasz’s saga restores confidence in the human capacity to overcome extreme adversity. Moreover, his pride in his origins, his zest for living and helping others are a fitting tribute to his beloved Bialy- stok, whose legacy he has scrupulously fulfilled. HOW I SURVIVED THE HOLOCAUST As I write these lines, I cannot help but relive those bitter Nazi years. Although painful, one needs to record those experiences for future generations, who must know what happened to our people — and what must never happen again. Before the war, I owned a water-purification and heating business. My partner was Jid! Las. When the Russians arrived in Bialystok in September 1939, cir- cumstances changed drastically. My business, like all others, was nationalized. The Soviets employed me as an engineer, sending me to the Russian interior so that I could bring back to Bialystok raw materials. Then disaster. The Nazi occupation of Bialystok ruined our lives to an extent unimaginable beforehand. I cannot com- prehend how we endured the suffering. Together with one hundred fifty other tradesmen, | was packed into a sealed bus whose capacity was thirty, 148