Soldinger, Samuel

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Samuel Soldinger was born in 1924 in Krakow, Poland.  He was one of three children born to Adele Presser and Solomon Soldinger.  Solomon died when Samuel was only 9, leaving his mother to care for him and his older brother, Jacob David, and younger sister, Sabina, while working as a nurse.

Krakow was a center of learning, architecture, arts, and culture.  On the eve of World War II, Jews made up nearly a quarter of the city’s population. The Jewish Soldinger family lived in the Kazimierz District, a major center for Jewish life. 

On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland.  Two weeks later, the Soviet Union invaded Poland from the east.  Caught in the powerful vice of two invading nations, Poland surrendered in early October.

The arrival of the Germans in Krakow brought vicious looting.  Jewish owned businesses were marked with a large Star of David and regularly suffered vandalism and theft.  Everyone age 10 and older were forced by the German invaders to wear the Star of David on their arm. 

Samuel’s brother, hearing of atrocities inflicted on Polish Jews, fled east hoping to escape the Nazis.  Samuel never saw or heard from him again.  He ultimately learned that his brother made it to Russia before dying of typhus. 

The Nazi invaders forced Jews from all over Krakow into the newly formed Krakow Ghetto by March 20, 1941. The forcibly resettled Jews were only allowed to bring 60 pounds of personal belongings.

The neighborhood where the ghetto was established had previously been home to 3,500 people.  Now 15,000 Jews were forced into it.  People were allotted 2 square meters in crowded apartments. A single apartment could contain as many as four families.  Disease spread like wildfire from the overcrowded conditions.

The Nazis began converting the ghetto into a prison. The Jewish residents were forced to build a wall surrounding the ghetto, and to brick off any windows facing outward.  The walls were shaped like tombstones, a sight that surely led the prisoners to question their ultimate fate.

Soldinger, now 16 years old, lived and worked at the airport outside the ghetto. He earned a small wage and a loaf of bread every day, but was separated from his mother and sister.  Adele, his mother, was sick by then, and he worried constantly about her health.

The Krakow Ghetto was used by the Nazis as a staging area for separating able workers from those to be deported to extermination camps. Beginning in June of 1942, the Nazis began mass deportations. Victims were forced onto train cars and deported to Auschwitz, Belzec, or other extermination camps.  The deportations were violent, with savage beatings and murders. 

In June, 1942, Jews employed outside the ghetto required a new pass marked with a blue stamp.  On a Monday morning, Soldinger lined up with thousands of other Jews to get his blue stamp.  When his turn came, Soldinger slipped his mother’s papers under his own, attempting to pass as a married couple and get them both stamps.  The ruse seemed to work at first.  But an SS officer soon recognized what was going on and crossed out the stamp on Adele’s papers.

The next day Adele and Sabina were spared deportation.    Later that same week, however, Adele and Sabina were deported and were murdered at an unknown death camp.

In May, 1943, the Nazis liquidated the Krakow Ghetto.  Able bodied workers were sent to the nearby Plaszow labor camp.  Everyone else was murdered.

Soldinger escaped liquidation at a satellite camp at the airport.  He was suffering from a severe case of rheumatic fever, a disease which develops from untreated infections.  Someone provided him with aspirin, but all he could do was lie down and rest.

While Soldinger suffered, Oskar Schindler arrived at the airport with Amon Goeth, commandant of Plaszow.  Known as The Murderer, Goeth saw Soldniger lying sick on a stack of boxes and ordered him to be shot.  Schindler stepped in, stating that Soldinger was one of his electricians.  In reality, Soldinger was merely an apprentice, but Schindler’s word stopped Goeth from killing him.

Still shivering from illness Soldinger boarded a truck which took him and other “electricians” to Schindler’s factory.  After a brief interview, he was given a job as a machinist.

Schindler built a satellite camp for the Jewish workers at his factory.  Conditions in Schindler’s camp were much better than Plaszow.  He provided showers, which helped control the spread of disease. 

Schindler kept the SS guards distracted from the Jews he employed at his enamelware factory by throwing lavish parties and showering them with expensive gifts.

Soldinger remembered Schindler fondly as father figure who treated Jews as human beings.  Schindler always “dressed beautifully,” and wore a large diamond ring.  He would allow the workers to listen to news of the war on BBC Radio.

After a brief respite, Soldinger’s rheumatic fever returned, and Schindler sent him to the hospital in the Plaszow camp for treatment.  While he was recovering, the Russian army advanced so near to Plaszow that the camp was liquidated.  This was the moment when Schindler’s famous list was developed.  Schindler was able to save 1,200 Jews by transferring them to his new factory in today’s Czech Republic. 

The rest of the unlucky Plaszow prisoners were murdered or transferred to other concentration camps.

Soldinger’s name was not on Schindler’s List.  He found himself packed on a freight train with thousands of other prisoners for three days in August, 1944.  When they arrived at their destination, they discovered they had been transported to Mauthausen concentration camp. 

At Mauthausen, death was everywhere.  Soldinger worked in the quarry where prisoners were forced to carry heavy rocks from the bottom up a flight of 186 stairs, called The Stairs of Death.  If a prisoner fell, their load would crash down on the people below, often severely injuring or killing them.  SS guards would sometimes push or shoot prisoners as they carried these rocks, forcing their heavy load to cascade onto the prisoners below resulting in even more deaths and injuries.

Soldinger was forced to work in the dangerous and treacherous quarry without shoes.  After two or three days, he realized he would soon die if he continued to work on the deadly stairs.  In a stroke of bravery and quick thinking, he pulled off his prison uniform and pretended he was a window washer.  That move saved his life.

On another occasion Soldinger was summoned to an SS barracks where the lights had gone out.  Despite having been an electrician’s apprentice in Krakow, he knew only the basics of electrical work.  Stalling for time, he played with the wires and then checked the fuses.  Luckily, one of the fuses had come loose.  He tightened it, pretended to do some other work, and then flipped the switch.  The lights came on, and he breathed a sigh of relief.

On May 5, 1945, as the American army approached Mauthhausan, the Germans marched Soldinger and hundreds of other prisoners out of camp and into tunnels in the mountains.  The prisoners, believing they were about to be murdered, overwhelmed the guards.  As Soldinger recounted the story, “A jeep came with four soldiers, four GIs, and that’s how we were freed.  The next day I was a free man…God bless America.”

After liberation, Soldinger didn’t know where to go.  All his immediate family members were dead. His home, the city of Krakow, was destroyed.

Soldinger reached out to an uncle who had moved to New York City prior to the war.  The uncle agreed to sponsor Soldinger to immigrate to the United States if he agreed to learn the diamond trade.  So Soldinger moved to Antwerp, Belgium, and learned to cut diamonds.  It took five years to get his visa, and in 1950 he moved to New York City.  While working for his uncle in New York, he met and married Saralee Salzberg, in 1951.  They had three children.  He became an American citizen on May 31, 1955, a little more than 10 years after the Americans had liberated him. 

In 1963, Soldinger asked a friend who worked for Harry Winston Jewelers about job openings in the company.  His friend said there was one that he knew of.  Soldinger scheduled an interview, got a shave, and bought himself a new suit.  He interviewed directly with Harry Winston, and was offered the job.  Winston, known as the King of Diamonds, had a unique job opportunity for Soldinger managing a diamond cutting plant in Chandler which employed Native American cutters. 

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The plant came about through the efforts of Senator Barry Goldwater, who was seeking to address the underemployment devastating Arizona’s Native American communities.  Goldwater and Winston believed that the craftsmanship possessed by many people in those communities would translate well to the work of cutting diamonds.  At Goldwater’s urging, the Bureau of Indian Affairs provided half of the funding for Native Americans to learn the diamond cutting trade.  After the three year training was completed, Winston would pay the diamond cutters, who were then eligible for raises based on their work.

While a few Chandler residents found employment at the plant, the majority of the 100 person workforce was Native American.  More than 80% of the workforce was Pima from the Gila River and Salt River communities.  In fact, the reason Chandler was selected for the plant was because of its location between the two reservations.  The remaining 20% of the workforce was Papago, Apache, and Navajo.

Soldinger was selected by Harry Winston for this specific task because of his experience and background.  Winston reasoned that as a survivor of the Holocaust Soldinger would be empathetic to the plight of Native Americans.  He would be patient in teaching them the difficult diamond cutting trade. Soldinger was the right man for the job.  Despite his life experiences, he had a sunny disposition which allowed him to maintain a positive outlook and to see the good in people.

Soldinger worked at the Winston plant in Chandler for 19 years until it closed in 1982.  The company gave Soldinger the opportunity to continue working in New York City or China.  Instead, Soldinger retired.  He passed away peacefully in 2001, after spending his retirement sharing his story with audiences across the country.