Vernier calipers used by a Jewish Polish worker in Oskar Schindler's armament factory

Samuel Klasner was born on September 8, 1917, in Wolbrom, Poland, to Bella and Jozef Klasner. He had two sisters, Lola, born in 1905, and Rachel, and three brothers, Wolf, the eldest, born on June 12, 1896, Adolf, and Bernard, born in 1910. Jozef was killed during an anti-Jewish pogrom in 1926. Sam was a member of a Zionist youth organization. His sister Lola Gilbert and her husband left for Rio de Janeiro in 1932.

In late summer 1939, Sam was drafted into the Polish Army. On September 1, 1939, Nazi Germany invaded Poland which soon surrendered to the Germans. Sam was sent to a prisoner of war camp. When his captors discovered that he was Jewish, he was sent to the Jewish ghetto in Krakow. On June 2, 1941, Sam was sent to Reichshof (Rzeszow) forced labor camp. In September 1942, he was transferred to Płaszów forced labor camp near Krakow where he worked in a textile factory. Płaszów was a brutal camp, where the arbitrary beating and murder of prisoners by the guards was a daily activity. Sam was a tailor and he sewed false bottoms in his tool pouch in which he hid potato peelings that he got from the kitchen. He became friendly with an SS officer who would give Sam food in exchange for items Sam knitted for the man's wife. On one occasion, Sam was caught taking potato peels by another SS guard, and the other guard intervened. Even though it was February, the guard took him outside, doused him with cold water, and left Sam to die. Sam next was transferred to Gross Rosen concentration camp in German occupied Czechoslovakia. In August 1943, the SS converted Płaszów to a concentration camp. Oskar Schindler, a German businessman who had an enamelwork factory, Emalia, in Płaszów, was given permission to make Emalia a subcamp. In October 1944, Schindler relocated his factory to Brunnlitz (Brnenec) in Moravia. It was now an armament factory and was classified as a subcamp of Gross Rosen. Schindler’s workers from Płaszów were transferred to and processed at Gross Rosen. Some of Schindler’s workers were mistakenly sent to Auschwitz and had to be replaced. Sam was mechanically minded and skilled and was invited to become a worker at Brunnlitz and have his name placed on Schindler’s list of laborers. Sam then went to Brunnlitz to work in the factory. Schindler left the camp on May 7, the day Germany surrendered. The camp was liberated on May 9 by Soviet forces who gave the prisoners vodka and cheered Stalin. They also interrogated the prisoners.

Sam was sent back to Poland so he could search for his family. Polish was extremely antisemitic and Sam was nearly killed in a pogrom. He went to a displaced persons camp in Regensburg, Germany, in the American zone. He learned that his mother Bella and sister Rachel had been deported from Wolbrom in 1941 to Treblinka killing center and murdered. His brothers Adolf and Wolf, and Wolf and Bernard’s families, were killed in Auschwitz. To make money, Sam dismantled German equipment and smuggled it into Czechoslovakia. At some point, he went to Palestine to assist the Jewish underground in their fight against British rule. He returned to Germany and, in July 1949, left for New York.

Sam first settled in Texas and worked at a machine factory. In 1950, he went to New York where he met Lida Cipliskia Flaum. The couple married on June 17, 1951. Lida had a son from a previous marriage and she and Sam had two children. Sam operated a grocery store until his retirement in 1979. Sam was one of the survivor’s from Schindler’s list whose firsthand account was filmed by Steven Spielberg for his film of the same name. After the film’s release in 1993, Sam began speaking about his wartime experiences. In May 1994, Sam attended a reception for Emilie Schindler, Oskar’s widow, who was in Florida on a trip from Argentina sponsored by the Women’s International Zionist Organization. Sam asked her if she remembered him, and she responded, Of course, I do, you’re Blue Eyes,” which had been her name for him. He cried and said he thought of her as his “second mother because I’m still alive today because of her…. I remember there were days she would pretend it was our birthday and give us bread. She gave us life.” Sam, age 76, died in Florida in 2001.