Abe Piasek

Abe Piasek, a survivor of four death camps in Poland and Germany, and a veteran of the U.S. Army, shared his story of survival with thousands of students and people throughout North Carolina at schools, universities, libraries, and military bases. At the end of the war, Abe survived because the train he was on, which he later learned was bound for Dachau, was bombed by allied forces.

Abe was born in Bialobrzegi, Poland, in 1928, and came to the United States in August of 1947. After World War II ended, Abe spent two years in displaced persons camps in Germany. He lived for 28 years in Connecticut, where he learned English, met his wife of 60 years, Shirley, and learned to be a baker. In 1975, he moved to California, and in 1991, he retired to Florida. A few years after the movie Schindler's List came out, Abe was interviewed by the USC Shoah Foundation in 1995. He slowly began, after more than 40 years of silence, to tell his story to groups of students.

Abe and his wife, Shirley, moved to North Carolina in 2009. After Shirley died in 2012, Abe spent more and more time sharing his story with military bases, libraries, and community centers.

In 2015, Abe and other survivors were reunited with one of the U.S. soldiers who helped liberate them 70 years earlier.

In April of 2019, Abe accompanied a group of high school students on a visit to the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum in Washington, DC. Though he had long been a member of the museum, this was his first visit there. While at the museum, Abe went to the cattle car on the third floor and narrated his liberation for his great-grandchildren and the other students on the trip.

In late May of 2019, Abe gave a talk for nearly two hours at a church in Faison, NC.

Abe passed away on January 15, 2020.