On Yom HaShoa – the day of the commemoration of the victims of the Shoah – Michael Smuss was asked by Steffen Seibert, Germany’s ambassador to Israel, to speak about his heroic fight in the Warsaw Ghetto against the Nazis – and about his improbable survival of the death camps and marches afterwards.
Watch the videos:
Michael Smuss is the last survivor of the Warsaw Ghetto.
Born in 1926, Michael risked his life hundreds of time to smuggle letters out and weapons into the Ghetto.
The Nazis finally captured him and put him on a train to Treblinka and his certain death. A simple twist of fate – the train broke down – gave him a lease on life.
And Michael did survive – ghettos, concentration camps and slave labor.
To become a highly-regarded artist and one of the most cherished Zeitzeugen – witnesses of the Holocaust.
I am deeply honored – as is Gunter Demnig, the creator of the Stolpersteine, and his entire organization – to receive such praise from a person of such undying courage and determination.
Kol hakavod, Michael Smuss!