Holocaust Survivor Oral Histories

Solomon Manischewitz was born on December 30, 1912 in Nowogródek, Poland (present day Navahrudak, Belarus). He grew up with two older sisters and a younger brother. Manischewitz was six years old when his father was killed in a pogrom, or organized massacre, for being Jewish. Two years after Nazi Germany’s invasion of Poland in 1939, Manischewitz and hundreds of other Jews were moved into a ghetto in Nowogródek, where they sewed clothing for German troops. Solomon was sent to the Majdanek concentration camp after attempting to escape Nowogródek with other prisoners. As Allied forces closed in on Majdanek in 1944, Solomon was forced to take part in a march with hundreds of other prisoners from the concentration camp to a train station, where they would be sent to Germany. Solomon and a friend managed to escape during the ordeal and hid in a cemetery until a Polish civilian provided them food and shelter. At the end of war, Solomon returned to Nowogródek temporarily and later found out that his mother and brother had been killed by the Nazis. One of his sisters immigrated to the United States prior to the outbreak of war and the other was killed in Lithuania after joining the Partisan movement. Solomon relocated to Łódź, Poland, where he met his to-be wife, Sara. The two moved to a displaced persons camp in Germany where Solomon founded and taught at the Henrietta Szold Hebrew school.  He and his wife later immigrated to the United States. Over the course of nearly forty years, he taught at the Talmudic Academy, Beth Israel, Beth Tfiloh, and Baltimore Hebrew College. Solomon passed away in 2009.