Samuel Hiller

Samuel Hiller, the son of Cesia and David Hiller, was born in 1941 in Krakow, Poland. Samuel’s mother was a saleslady, and his father was a merchant. They lived in Krakow, a large industrial city where Jewish cultural and social life flourished between the two world wars. In 1939, Krakow, the third largest city in Poland, had 60,000 Jewish citizens.

On September 6, 1939, Krakow was occupied by the Germans, who immediately began persecuting the Jews.

Jewish property was confiscated and several synagogues were burned down. By March 1941, approximately 40,000 Jews had been expelled to neighboring towns and the property they left behind was seized. At the same time, a closed-off ghetto was established. The worst problems included overcrowding, hunger, and poor sanitary conditions. The population was impoverished, and the Germans set up several factories in the ghetto, where they used the Jews as slave laborers. Many Jews died in the streets from starvation, disease, and exposure.

At the end of May 1942, the Germans began deporting Jews from the ghetto to death camps. At the end of March 1943, Cesia heard that the ghetto was to be emptied and all its inhabitants murdered. She escaped from the ghetto, and arranged for a Christian woman to care for her 2-year-old son. Unable to bear not seeing her child, Cesia left her hiding place to visit him. On one visit, she was recognized as a Jew and was shot on the spot by the Gestapo.

David died in Auschwitz Death Camp in 1944.

Nothing further is known about Samuel’s fate.

Jews first came to Poland from central Europe at the end of the 11th century, as refugees from the Crusades. They were welcomed by the Polish nobility, which was eager to use their skills in modernizing their country. Jews were granted charters to live in specific towns and engage in various businesses and crafts. After the massacre of 1648-1649 by the Cossacks, Poland’s surviving Jews were impoverished.

Despite the economic poverty, however, religious and cultural life was rich. Poland was home to some of the world’s greatest rabbis and scholars. Religious observance throughout the large cities and smaller towns, known as shtetlach, was the norm, and religious scholarship was highly prized. By the late 19th and early 20th century, Jewish cultural life in Poland expanded to include political parties and Zionist groups, as well as a wide range of literature and sports clubs. By the 1930s, Poland’s Jews numbered over 3 million and accounted for 10% of the total population.