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Three local students interviewed Holocaust survivor Samuel Young, a resident of Keene, and wrote essays about him, which will be included in a book of essays from high school students throughout the state.

Assemblymember Jean Fuller (R-Bakersfield) honored Young and the students at a luncheon Friday and they all will be honored in Sacramento Monday as part of California Holocaust Memorial Week.

Here are their stories:

A Quest for Freedom

By Hayley O'Grady
Centennial High School

     The first time that someone tried to kill Samuel Josipovits Young, he was only 18 years old.  Samuel was born in Czechoslovakia on December 22, 1922.  His parents were both born in what was Austria-Hungary at the time.  His father was born into an intellectual family near the town that Samuel Josipovits grew up in.  Samuel was raised in his mother’s home town.  His mother was born to a family of farmers and she continued farming after her marriage.  There were about one thousand Jewish families in Samuel’s small town.  Though his aunts, uncles and grandparents died in the Holocaust, his family was one of the largest to survive.
    Samuel’s father was a doctor who practiced out of his home.  Patients would knock on the windows, in the front of the house, to request medical assistance.  Samuel’s father was very busy and was not able to spend much time with his family; however, Samuel’s mother spent an abundance of time with her children.  His mother taught him many things, including multiplication and division.  At six years old, he went to Czech school.  At ten years old, he went to another town for schooling and stayed with friends of the family.  Samuel went to a Hebrew high school that had at most 450 students throughout his time there.  He went to this high school, run by a Mr. Kugel, until 1938.  He graduated in 1941.
    In Samuel’s opinion, one of the most important factors that contributed to his family’s survival was the fact that they spoke many different languages.  In his home, they spoke Hungarian.  On his mother’s farm, he learned Russian.  In second grade, he learned Hebrew.  These communication skills helped him to prevail through the horrors of the Holocaust.
    On July 15, 1941 Samuel Josipovits and his family, along with other Jews, were taken from what was Hungary at the time. They were brought to Russia, which was occupied by the Germans, and left at Jageinica. 
    Samuel and his family went to live with a Catholic, Polish doctor named, Lachowicz.  His family stayed with the doctor for one year.  Samuel’s father would practice medicine despite the terrible conditions.  During that time, the police ordered all Jews to the town square, supposedly to be taken to another village.  Samuel and his family did not go. The Germans shot down every Jew present in the town square.  Three boys, who had strayed to get some water, saw what was happening on their way back.  The boys ran and hid until it was safe for them to escape.  The three boys witnessed the Germans killing approximately 400 – 500 Jews in the town square.  One day Dr. Lachowicz went to see a patient and never came back.  With no income, the doctor’s wife and daughter left town; they had lost everything.
In July of 1941, the police came and told the Jews to pack enough for one night, because they were taking them to the next town.  Samuel’s mother packed a small suitcase and his father took his medicine satchel.  The Hungarian police took the Jewish people to boxcars and they rode to the borders of Hungary.  At the border, all the Jews were forced to sleep in a saw mill for the night. In the morning, the police took all the gold and silver that the Jews owned.  Samuel was taken to a forced labor camp in 1943.  He was about twenty years old.  Samuel’s parents and sister were taken to Auschwitz in July of 1944. 
    The camp, where Samuel was held, was located in Romania and was part of the Hungarian Army.  Jews in the camp were supplied with a box of meager necessities.  The box was about 3 feet by 18 inches by 18 inches deep.  The box held clothes and any other possessions that the prisoners managed to retain.  The camp was located in an area known as “A Gold Village” because gold had been found nearby. 
    The prisoners of the camp were ordered to construct a concrete building.  This building was to be the prisoners’ own sleeping quarters, but it was never finished.  Therefore, prisoners were forced to sleep outside or underneath the unfinished building.  Prisoners tried to sleep on top of something or cover themselves with something to keep from freezing.  They were rationed very little food; two pounds of rye bread had to last two days.  Occasionally, they were given soup that was practically inedible.  In the mornings, they were given coffee made from chicory and a little bread.  There were few doctors and no sanitation methods whatsoever.  Prisoners were forced to go out to a swamp to relieve themselves. 
    Samuel was transferred to a different labor camp.  This enabled him to avoid being sent to the Russian front as labor support.  This camp had better conditions.  The camp was located in line with Chepel Island and surrounded by other camps.  The camp was a big manufacturing base.  Prisoners were given jobs to manufacture everything for the military.  Samuel worked as a tool and die maker.  In this new camp, they were provided with sleeping quarters and cold showers.  After work, the prisoners were allowed to go into town.  On Saturday at noon, half of the camp was released and expected back on Sunday evening.  The other half was excused Sunday morning and was expected back on Monday at noon.  Samuel’s working group consisted of 400 people.  Prisoners were also allowed packages from home. 
    In June of 1944, Great Britain began to bomb this camp and the surrounding camps.  Many people died in the bombings due to various causes. Great Britain sent liberators regularly at eleven a.m. and five p.m. everyday.  Conditions continued to worsen.  Samuel escaped to the underground, in Budapest.
    Samuel’s family survived Auschwitz and was taken to other camps until they were rescued by the Russian army.
    After escaping from the camps, Samuel became involved the underground Jewish rescue system.  Conditions of this life were hard.  Some survived by living with a Nazi, that way other Nazis would not come to check for them and take them away.  Samuel was able to get a room with a women’s prison matron and a Hungarian ship captain from the Dahub River. 
    At one point, the Russian police caught Samuel and took him in for interrogation. One of the interrogators recognized him from the underground.  This interrogator ended up supplying Samuel with a paper to keep him from getting caught.  The paper was written so that nobody could really read it.  When Samuel showed it to a train conductor, he thought it was a ticket and Samuel was able to travel anywhere for free. 
    To resist the Nazis, Samuel carried a hand grenade and a gun, but he never killed anyone.  He did get caught in November of 1944, and he received a beating, but he was able to escape the prison after three days. 
People working in this underground system provided Jews with false papers and any other help they could provide. With these papers, they pretended they were not Jews.  Samuel helped prisoners of Hungarian ghettos escape to Romania.  From Romania they would go to Turkey and from there to Israel.
    When Russia defeated the German and Hungarian Armies, Samuel returned to what he hoped would be Czechoslavia.  Shortly after his return, the Russians took over his home and he realized that he needed to escape.  The conditions were not any better under the Russians than they had been under the Nazis.  The police would arrest anyone without reason.  Samuel and his girlfriend fled to Prague.  There, he became a student at the University.  When communism won in the Czech elections, a law was passed mandating young men to serve in the army for three years.  Samuel was able to get a passport and escape August 13, 1946 to New York.  Once in the United States, Samuel changed his name to Samuel Josipovits Young, using his former last name as his middle name.
    Samuel moved to the San Fernando Valley. When his father retired, his parents moved from New York to Los Angeles.  Samuel had married his girlfriend in 1945 inside Russia. Her name was Irene.  They had a son and an adopted granddaughter.  Samuel’s father sent money to the widow of Dr. Lachowicz on a regular basis.  After his death, Samuel continued to send money to the wife and daughter of the kind doctor.
    Samuel’s first wife passed away in 1971, and he married Betty in 1973.  He is still married and living in Keene, California.  His sister, Handa, is married and living in Hollywood.  His parents passed away in the United States.
    Samuel Young helps us to visualize what happened.  He and other survivors are important links to remind us of those horrors we cannot fathom.  The Holocaust was a devastating period of our history, a time we must remember and prevent from happening again.
 

One Man’s Unique Story During the Holocaust

By Jacob Brudvig
Bakersfield Christian High School

During the Holocaust, there were many people who went through and witnessed things that, in the normal course of human existence, should never have to be faced. The atrocities that so many people went through are legendary, taking on an aura of sadness, tragedy, and even hope. The Holocaust may remind you of the story of Anne Frank and her struggles.  However, not many people have heard of Sam Young, an elderly gentleman who now resides in Keene, California. At first glance, Mr. Young, or Sam as he likes to be called, is a normal human being.  He has a house, a wife, friends, and a successful business.  These things in themselves may be considered success in modern life, yet his real “success” is found in his unique and inspiring story of survival during the Holocaust.

    Sam was born on the 22th of December, 1922 in what was known as the Czech Republic.  His father was a prominent town physician and his mother was actually a farmer.  The town that Sam was born in had a population of around 12,000 and actually has several different names.  The Czech name for the town was Sevelas, the Russian name for the town currently is Vino Gradova, and the Hungarian name for the town was Sevlus, which means vineyards.  While his father worked as a physician, his mother would work running the family farm, which grew mostly tobacco. 

    As with most Jewish Families, his Father and Mother valued education.  Because of this, Sam attended Czech school until 1933; he was ten years of age.  His parents then transferred him to Hebrew school where he attended until he graduated in 1941.  During his time at Hebrew school, Sam saw the world around him change.  In 1937, Adolf Hitler ordered the annexation of part of the Czech Republic called the Sudetenland.  According to Hitler, this land was traditionally German and should be returned to Germany.  While many were opposed to this, they had no choice.  Another change was the constant pressure on the Jewish people by new racist laws.  While at first these laws were small in nature, they grew.  An example of the later harsher laws was that Jewish people could not own a business.  While many people simply went into partnership with a non-Jewish person, it had an effect on the Jewish people both monetarily and mentally.

Once Sam finished Hebrew school, he worked as a supervisor for several months on the family farm until the 15th of July, 1941.  On that day, Sam was working on the farm when suddenly his parents sent word for him to return home.  When he got there, the Hungarian police were waiting to take his mother, father, sister, and himself to the next town for one night.  They were told that it was just a processing formality and that they needed to pack for just one night since they would return the next day.  The odd thing about this was that the Hungarians seemed to take people at random.  Sam’s grandparents were not taken and out of the 400 to 500 other people taken, only a few of them had their entire family called for the “processing.” Being forced to go, Sam’s family and the other’s were loaded up in military trucks where they were taken to box cars.  All the people were loaded up into the box cars which had no water, food, restrooms, or provisions of any kind.  They were treated like cattle. 

When the long box car journey ended, the group was not in the next town as they were told; rather they were at the border of Hungary in a town called Jasina which was in the Carpaten Mountains.  Here, the people were lead to a saw mill where they stayed until they went in front of the military leaders for “processing.” These military leaders asked for their names, and the people had to give up any gold, silver, and money that they had with them.  Once everyone was processed, Sam and everyone else were led to trucks which took them into Russia which at that time was occupied by the Germans.  Since Russia was a war zone at that time, the bridges and roads were primarily destroyed.  Many times, the people had to get out of the trucks, walk across the rivers or poor roads, and then were loaded again into the trucks. 

During one of these transfers, a woman fell and hurt herself during the switch.   Sam’s dad, being a physician, went and helped the woman.  For some reason, his dad took a while to get back.  When he finally did, one of the Hungarian guards got angry at Sam’s father and went to strike him with his gun, but Sam blocked the Hungarian’s arm.  Madly, the guard walked away, or so Sam thought.  When the trucks started back up, Sam was in the front of the back truck.  He overheard the guard say to another guard that when the truck had to stop again, Sam was to be shot because of his insolence of touching the Hungarian.   Well, Sam was not about to die, so when the convoy stopped again, he saw a cemetery with a small retaining wall.  Immediately, Sam jumped and hid behind this wall.  Thankfully, the police did not find him.  Once everyone was unloaded, the Hungarians told the people not to go back to Hungary and simply drove off. 

After a few minutes, Sam came out of hiding and around that time, the local Ukrainian militia came upon these people.  They led the people to the local Ukrainian village where they were told to go into a very large stable which used to hold Arabian horses.  A man named Lanzkoronsky had left the facility, so it was open.  There were a few dead horses left, but it had water so the people were happy.  The people in the town were relatively friendly.  A local Polish man let the people eat from his potato farm.

It was here that a chance sickness would lead to a remarkable friendship.  In the village, there was a woman who was sick.  Sam’s father went to help and it was here that he was told the entire area had but one doctor, Dr. Lachwicz.   His father asked to see the doctor and soon enough, Dr. Lachwicz and Sam’s father became friends.  The doctor asked Sam’s father and his family to come work with him.  Once they arrived at the doctor’s house, they learned just how compassionate the doctor was.  They were greeted by Dr. Lachwicz and his wife who led them to where food and a bath were waiting for all of them.  While the food was simply some hard boiled eggs, milk, and bread, Sam stated that since he really hadn’t eaten anything of substance in a long time, it was probably the best meal of his life.

Later on, Sam learned just how lucky he was that his father was a physician.  You may be asking, “What happened to the other people?” Well, after a while, they were led to a village called Kanenepz Podolsk where they were told that they were going back to Hungary.  The trucks came up to load the people, but when they opened up the back flap of the truck to let the people in, there were machine guns.  All but 3 men whom had gone to get water were shot and murdered.

While Sam’s family lived with the Lachwicz’s the local people would exchange what they had, chicken, apples, wood, etc. for medical aid from Sam’s father.  At this time, all medical supplies had been taken away, so Sam’s father had to come up with improvisational medicine.  For example, many people suffered from an iron deficiency at that time.   The solution Sam’s father came up with was to have the people take apples and put some rusty iron nails in them.  After a while, he would take out the nails and tell the people to eat the apples.   A simple solution, but effective.

The family lived with Dr. Lachwicz’s family for about a year.  While they were better off than many Jews in the area, times were still tough.  The local police, in order to “snuff” out the Jews, made it illegal to get wood from the local forest.  So, what food the people could get, it was almost impossible to cook.  Also during this time, the police asked for several Jewish men, for what he does not know.  Since Sam was a Jew, the local community picked him as one of the men to be one of the Jewish men picked to go with the police.   Of course, the town was interested in saving their own men.  Dr. Lachwicz asked the Jewish community to not make Sam go, but they would not budge.

Fortunately for Sam, Dr. Lachwicz treated a Gestapo officer for some medical problem that he had.  After the treatment was completed, Dr. Lachwicz got the officer so drunk that he convinced him to go to the Jewish community and tell them not to make Sam go with the police.  The officer agreed and Sam and his mother carried the officer through the snow to the local Jewish community where he ordered them to not make Sam go.  Since they could not ignore this order, Sam was free.

After a year of living with Dr. Lachwicz, however, the family could not take it anymore.  The conditions were so bad that they decided to somehow get back into Hungary.  After a year of hiding and moving, they finally got back to Hungary.  On this trip though, Sam learned just how bad people were living.  If you have ever heard of nettle or “stinging nettle,” you know how much it stings.  Well, in order to get food, Jews were boiling it down for the protein and eating it.   The only way that Sam’s family got back was with the help of a smuggler who got them across the border into Hungary. 

Once back, Sam’s family lived peacefully for a while, but soon after, Sam was forced into the Jewish division of the Hungarian army.  While he was officially part of the Hungarian army, he was sent to a forced labor camp.   Luckily for Sam, he liked horses and so at the camp, he was made a stable boy.  The stable boys had an actual cabin that they lived in, which was still a very poor place to sleep, but it was better than everyone else who lived in the open air quarters. 

After a while, the camp leader asked for anyone who was a metal shaper/ dye maker.  Sam figured he had nothing to lose, and there were rumors circulating that the other camp had better living conditions.  So, he raised his hand and went to the new camp in Budapest.  There, the sleeping quarters were a little better and the food rations were also better.  The interesting thing was that Sam had no idea how to shape or work metal.  He gave the name of a dye maker in his village that he “apprenticed” under so he would not get in trouble, but the only way he survived was by the help of the other men at this camp who liked him.

On the weekends, the men were actually allowed to go into Budapest and receive packages.  It was in Budapest that Sam met his future wife, who was part of the underground network.  Sam worked at this camp for a while until the facility was completely bombed out and they were forced to move the camp 40 miles outside of Budapest.  Luckily though, with the aid of his girlfriend,  who worked in the underground network (who would one day become his wife); Sam was able to escape the camp.  Once he did, Sam joined the underground network and tried to help others who needed help.

Sam helped the underground until he was recaptured.  Sam was interrogated, tortured and got the “crud” beat out of him, but he did not give in.  Once his captors gave up, they made him work in a weapons distribution center.  Here, Sam would help load trucks for the Germans.   Every once in a while though, one of the trucks would get a flat tire and Sam would get a jack and help fix the tire.  After a while, the guards became used to Sam grabbing the jack.  One day, a truck got a flat so Sam went to get the jack.  He got past the guards and once he was out of sight, Sam ran off and escaped again.  Because of Sam’s torture and the fact that he was known by his captors, he could no longer work in the underground network.

Sam stayed in hiding until the Russians surrounded Budapest in January 1945.  Once the Russians captured the town, Sam had to prove who he was.  In order to get back home, Sam was constantly interrogated.  Finally, Sam figured out how to get around this.  One of the Russian guards helped him make a paper which let him get to his home.  The Russians required three things for a person to travel freely; a picture, an official stamp, and typed writing on a document, which would allow people to get wherever they wanted to go.  This pass became Sam’s guardian.  It finally got him back home.

Sam learned that his parents and sister had been sent to concentration camps because they were Jews. His father went to Auschwitz and his mother and sister went to work at the V-2 rocket factory. Luckily they survived.

 Through a remarkable set of events that would be as long to write as the story up until now, Sam and his wife made it to America on the 13th of August, 1946 with only 3 dollars in his pocket.  Luckily, Sam had an aunt in New York who let Sam and his wife stay with her for a few days.  She gave them what little money she could spare and they left for new horizons.  They went to Detroit, Michigan where Sam got a job earning $30.00 a week at a lumber yard.  He worked there until December, 1946.

At this time, Sam moved to Los Angeles and became a home improvement salesman.  He was so successful that he was audited by the IRS the first year he worked because they refused to believe that he, a poor immigrant from Hungary, had made over $11,000.00 his first year.  At that time, $11,000.00 was a large amount of money.  After two years, he went into the home building business, where he is still partially active.

His wife died in 1971 and since then, Sam remarried.  In 1978, Sam moved to Keene and bought the Keene ranch.  He still lives there today.

Sam still supports Dr. Lachwicz’s family for their help during the Holocaust.     Unfortunately, Dr. Lachwicz disappeared mysteriously when he went to help a patient after the Russians took occupancy of the area.  Dr. Lachwicz’s family lost everything after that.  To this day, Sam and Dr. Lachwicz’s daughter still write each other letters.

I hope now that when you think of the Holocaust, you not only think of Anne Frank and other famous people, but all the Jews who experienced hell on earth during that period of history.  There are so many people who went through experiences like Sam’s. Sam says you can better understand the big picture if you can understand that while there were over 6 million Jews killed during the holocaust, over 51 million people in all were killed during WWII. The people of today need to get over their differences. After both World War I and World War II, both were declared as the “war to end all wars”, yet conflict and war still exists. What happened to the Jews during WWII is happening to other people currently in places like Darfur, Rwanda, and the Sudan. Don’t ever forget what evil is capable of. Remember our past, defend the innocent of the present, and plan to prevent atrocities in the future.  Education is the only way I know of eliminating intolerance of others, and remembering the Holocaust victims honors them and keeps their memories alive.  If forgotten, you have let Hitler and the Nazis win all over again.
 

Surviving the Holocaust:  A True Survivor

By Austin Wood
Centennial High School

On December 22, 1922, a courageous man named Samuel was born in Czechoslovakia to Mr. and Mrs. Josipovits.  Mrs. Josipovits was a farmer and Mr. Josipovits was a doctor.  Samuel Young had a younger sister named Handa, who was two years younger than him.  Mr. Young was a very smart child.  When Samuel was six years old, he went to a Czechoslovakian school.  At ten years old, he went to a different town for schooling and stayed with family friends.  He attended a Hebrew high school run by Mr. Kugel until 1938.  As a child, Mr. Young recalls that the Jewish and non-Jewish folks got along just fine.  Czechoslovakia was a democratic country and they all lived in harmony, until Adolf Hitler came into power and took over. 

In June of 1941, the Germans battled the Russians.  The Germans then occupied Russia.  Mr. Young was among a group of Jews taken from Hungary to Russia by the Hungarian Police.  They were dropped at Jagelnci.  On July 15, 1941, police came in the morning and told them they were taking him and his family to the next city.  The police told them that they would only need enough for the night.  Mr. Young’s mother packed only the essentials for the family, assuming they would only be gone for a night.  Mr. Young’s father was a doctor and always carried his medicine bag with him, so that too came with them.  The Hungarian Police took the family and other Jews to the train station in box cars.  They were then taken to the border of Hungary and they were put into a sawmill for the night.  The next morning, the police took everyone’s valuables including anything that contained gold or silver.   The police also took their IDs.  They were put into military trucks and taken into the Russia.

Between July of 1941 and June of 1942, Mr. Young was in Russia occupied by Germans.  Mr. Young and others from Hungary were taken to Jagelnci; Mr. Young and his family stayed with a Polish doctor, Mr. Lachowicz, and his family for a year.  He was a Catholic man and a wonderful person who tried to help everyone in every possible way he could.  The rest of the families from Hungary were taken to Kamenell Podolsk, and the Germans killed all of them except for three men.  The three who avoided death were getting water.   They saw what the Germans were doing to the others, and they escaped.  At this time, things were pretty bad, but they got better in Hungary.  Mr. Young was then smuggled back into Hungary in July of 1942.

In August of 1943, Mr. Young was taken to a forced labor camp in Romania, due to his age.  He was between the ages of twenty and twenty-one.  Mr. Young’s family stayed in Hungary until 1944.  Then they were taken to Auschwitz.  The forced labor camp was part of the Hungarian Army.  The Jews which were part of the labor camp, had to supply necessities for themselves.  The only supplies that the Hungarian Army supplied them with was the military army camp.  These groups of Jews were supposed to be a support group for the military. 

In December of 1943, Mr. Young was taken to another labor camp.  The English translation for the camp was, “A Gold Village,” because gold had been found in this particular village.  In the camp, Mr. Young was given a small box to keep his clothing in.  At this certain camp in Romania, there was a concrete building that had started being built, but it was never finished.  On really cold nights, Mr. Young and others in the camp would sleep underneath the unfinished building.  Mr. Young had to sleep outside.  To prevent himself from freezing, he would sit on a rock and try to cover himself.  Mr. Young would sleep on one side and then once he could take the cold no longer, he would flip on his other side and sleep like that for a while.  There was little food.  Each morning each person got half of a four pound loaf of rye bread.  This had to last for two days.  For breakfast, Mr. Young would drink a cup of coffee made from chicory with some bread.   There was soup that was also prepared, but most food served was pretty inedible.  In the camp, there was really no form of a decent bathroom, so instead they would go into the swamp to relieve themselves.  There was a medical division, but it was a place with few doctors and some inmates.  In the camp, there was no sanitation whatsoever.

Mr. Young found out that the Hungarian Army was looking for trades’ people to take to Budapest to a forced labor camp, which was used to manufacture everything for the military.  It was a considerably better camp, and if Mr. Young did not go there, he would most likely have been sent to the Russian front.  Mr. Young lied and said he was a tool and dye maker, so he was sent to Budapest.  The labor camp in Budapest was much better because there were sleeping quarters and they had cold showers to use.  They were permitted to go to town after work.  Half of the camp was let out Saturday at noon and had to be back by Sunday evening.  Then the other half was let out Sunday morning and had to be back Monday by noon.  Packages were allowed from home and they were allowed to have contact with people outside of the labor camp.  There were about four hundred people working in the group.  The labor camp was surrounded by other camps.  Chepel Island was in the middle of the Duna River.  On the Island, was the main military manufacturing base.  Great Britain began bombing the facility.  Planes flew over their camp and came everyday at eleven a.m. and five p.m. to drop bombs.  The bombs always hit the camp Mr. Young was in, before it hit the Island.  During the bombings, there was no shelter, so many workers were maimed or killed.  When the bombs exploded, great air pressure was created, which caused many workers to not be able to breath.  After their camp was totally destroyed and would not produce, they were relocated to a knitting factory that had been transformed into a military factory. 

Things began to get worse, so Mr. Young decided to escape and join the Underground in Budapest.  The goal of the Underground was to save as many lives from the Nazis as possible, by providing the Jews and others with clothes and false papers.  They also helped people escape out of Hungary to Romania, Turkey, and Israel.  The people who participated in the Underground had to protect themselves and their whereabouts.  The best place for hiding was to live with real Nazis, because the Hungarian Nazis would go house to house arresting people and taking their food.  However, houses of real Nazis were simply overlooked.  While hiding in the Underground, Mr. Young lived with a Nazi family.  The lady of the house often said that no Jew could hide in her house because she would be able to tell.  Mr. Young always agreed with her, so he would not raise suspicion about not really being Nazi.  The family was always very nice to Mr. Young.  In November of 1944, Mr. Young was sent to prison for resisting the Nazis.  However, he escaped the prison after about three days.  A friend of Mr. Young gave him papers which were supposed to say that he had already been integrated by the Russians.  With these papers, he would not have to be bothered again.  His friend handwrote the papers instead of typing them, so nobody could understand the message, but it looked official, so they were always honored.  Mr. Young got much use out of what he called his “piece of junk.”

In January of 1945, Russia defeated the German and Hungarian Armies and occupied Budapest.  Mr. Young went back to his hometown, under the impression it was still Czechoslovakia.  However, Russia had taken over and annexed it. Mr. Young and his girlfriend, whom he had met in the Underground, realized they had to escape.  They escaped to Prague.  Samuel Young entered Prague University as an engineer.  Mr. Young thought he was going to finish going to school at the University.  Situations under Russian rule were not any better than under the Nazis, but they did have different ideas than the Nazis.  The Russians would arrest people for no good reason, and people would be called on to do something and would never be seen or heard from again.  Elections came in Czechoslovakia, and the communists won.  Also a law was passed, which stated men had to serve in the Czechoslovakian Army for three years.  So Mr. Young and his wife, with their passports, arrived on Staten Island in New York on August 13, 1946. 

Mr. Young married his first wife, Irene, in Russia.  They had a son together.  However, Mr. Young’s wife passed away.  He remarried in 1973 to Betty.  Mr. Young has many nieces and nephews from Betty’s side of the family.  He also has a grandchild, which his son from his first marriage adopted.  Mr. Young lived in New York for a little while and then moved to the San Fernando Valley.  His parents lived in New York, until his father retired, then his parents moved to Los Angeles.  Out of all of the Jewish families in their communities, Mr. Young’s family was the only family to survive as a whole.  Mr. Young currently resides in Keene, California, with his wife Betty.

Mr. Young never met or saw Adolf Hitler, but he remembers the first time he heard his voice on the radio, as if it happened yesterday.  Mr. Young can also recall when Hitler came to power in 1933 and began to blame all of Germany’s problems on the Jews.  Mr. Young has not made peace with the events that occurred during the Holocaust, and he will never forget what happened.

Mr. Young credits his survival to luck and the languages he knew.  Mr. Young knows seven different languages.  Mr. Young is a true survivor. He wants to spread the message that no one should let another human being control them, because the horrible events of the Holocaust can reoccur and can happen to anyone.  The Holocaust was a devastating period in history.  It must never be forgotten and we must always remember these horrific events, in order to prevent it from ever happening again.