Szymon Kluger
Szymon Kluger (January 19, 1925, Oświęcim, Poland — May 26, 2000) was the last Jew in Oświęcim.
Life
Szymon Kluger was born as son of Symcha Kluger and Fryda Weiss in Oświęcim. He attended the elementary school, which he finished in spring 1939.
World War II
During World War II, Kluger was deported to the Ghetto in Bendsburg (Będzin) and to one of the Blechhammer forced labor camps in 1942, and he was marked with the number 179539. (During this time, his parents were taken to, and died at, the Auschwitz concentration camp.) From Blechhammer he was brought to the KZ Groß-Rosen, later to the Buchenwald concentration camp, where he was a forced laborer in aircraft construction.
In April 1945 Szymon Kluger was rescued by the American Army near by Halberstadt. Through the help of the Swedish Red Cross and the UNRRA he came to Sweden in July for a social treatment. Until 1946 he was in a hospital in Malmö and Kalmar and wanted to stay in Sweden. His remaining family was in Sweden (brother) and Frankfurt am Main (sister).
In the beginning he got social welfare because he had no job. Then he attended a technical school in Uppsala and learned a profession as mechanician and electrician. In the meantime he got to know with a woman from Romania. They became engaged, but broke it off soon after. Szymon Kluger became ill and had to stay in hospital again. After his treatment he worked with the Radio Svenska AB as a piece worker. He attended a distance learning program and tried to learn a technical profession. Meanwhile he got a Swedish alien passport.
In 1962, Szymon Kluger returned to Poland and started work at the Oświęcim chemical factory, living in a hotel for workers on Wyspiański Street. Soon after his return to his parental home next to the Chevra Lomdei Mishnayot Synagogue, he retired due to bad health
House of Szymon Kluger
The House of Szymon Kluger is a museum located directly behind the Chewra Lomdei-Mishnayot Synagogue. Kruger's siblings (Moishe Kluger and Bronia Kluger Rosenblatt) donated their family house to the Auschwitz Jewish Center Foundation after Kruger's death and shortly before the inauguration of the Auschwitz Jewish Center in 2000. Szymon, Moishe, and Bronia (the only members of the family who survived the Holocaust) had lived together in the house with their six siblings, their parents and both grandparents. The three-floor building was owned by Bernard Teichmann, the maternal grandfather, who also had a business in Germany. Until Adolf Hitler's decision to close all Jewish companies, Bernhard Teichmann commuted regularly to Germany. Szymon Kluger's father taught his children the doctrine of the Talmud.
References
- Lucyna Filip: Jews in Oswiecim 1918–1941. Oswiecim 2005