User:Miriam C. Jacobs/S. B. Unsdorfer

New article name goes here new article content ... S. B. Unsdorfer was born in Bratislava, Slovakia, the son of the town's much-loved rabbi. At the tender age of nineteen he was torn from his parents at Auschwitz where they were selected for extermination on the night of their arrival in 1944. Simcha survived Auschwitz and Buchenwald death camps to make a new life in england where he self-taught himself English sufficiently to tell his story. He went on to write copiously in Jewish journals world wide, with a special emphasis on children's stories, which were anthologized in stories of Simcha. He served as general secretary of Agudath Israel in Britain and was founder of its community newspaper, The Jewish Tribune, which he edited until his untimely death from a camp-related illness at the age of forty-three. His widow and two children live in England. - Toby Press

“Simcha Bunem Unsdorfer was the son of a well-known rabbi in Bratislava, the mother community for the Jewish population of Czechoslovakia. Because of the importance of his father’s position, the family was permitted to remain in the city after the German occupation during World War II. Eventually, however, the family was deported to the infamous camps of Auschwitz where the Unsdorfers were separated and the parents killed. Their nineteen-year-old son Simcha was transferred from Auschwitz to work in an airplane factory in the Buchenwald camp. Throughout his long and terrible ordeal, he and his fellow prisoners were mercilessly molested by the S.S. men, but they held on to life tenaciously, their faith in God and His Torah never wavering. When the war finally ended, workers and prisoners were freed and permitted to go home. Home! Home! cried the Czechs, dancing and kissing in mad jubilation. We, the Jews, sank down on the floor again…Home Home What a travesty. Home a place that no longer was, and never would be again. Free…What were we freed for? Only to mourn and lament for the rest of our days over the greatest tragedy that had ever befallen our people in our long and trying history. Simcha Bunem Unsdorfer has written a deeply moving account of his experiences as a devout Jew in the concentration camps and factories of the Nazi Reich. The Yellow Star is a painful story, but a heroic one, a book which cogently describes the Divine strength inherent in the Jewish soul.”- Barnes and Noble

ISBN 	9781592643752 Pages 	206 Language 	English Binding 	Paperback