Biography
Henryk Wiener is the son of Jakub and Sarah Wiener. He was born January 12, 1921 in Jurkow, Poland, where his father was a businessman. Henryk had two younger siblings: Maniek (b. 1923) and Emilia (b. 1929). In 1927 the Wiener family moved to Chorzow. Located on the German border, Chorzow was the first town to be invaded by the Germans in September 1939. The Wieners fled immediately after the invasion and settled in Wisnicz Nowy, where they were soon forced into a ghetto. In the fall of 1942, the family moved or was transferred to the Bochnia ghetto. There, Maniek was arrested and executed for his connections to the Zionist underground led by Szymek Dranger. Subsequently, Jakub, Sarah and Emilia were deported to their death in Auschwitz. In July 1943 Henryk was transferred to the Plaszow concentration camp, where he was chosen to work in Oskar Schindler's factory. Henryk's selection was due to his discovery that a Jewish policeman organizing the group was a cousin of his mother's. In November 1944, Henryk was sent to the Gross Rosen concentration camp, along with a transport of 800 Schindler Jews, but Schindler succeeded in winning their release and transfer to his munitions factory in Bruennlitz, Czechoslovakia. Henryk remained there from November 1944 until the liberation of the factory camp by Soviet troops on May 8, 1945. He was 24 years old at the time of his release. Henryk then returned to Poland to look for surviving family members. After learning that his entire family had perished, he was put in touch with his former girlfriend from Wisnicz, Sala (later Sally) Schoen. Sala had survived for three years after the liquidation of the Wisnicz ghetto, hidden behind a double wall in the home of a Polish friend, Halina Lacny. Sala's parents, Abraham and Malka Schoen, perished in Auschwitz, and her brother, Meyer, was killed in Kaufering shortly before the end of the war. Her sister, Tonka, survived in the ghetto, and her husband, Nathan Krieger, survived with Henryk at the Bruennlitz factory. Henryk returned to his family's home in Chorzow and remained there for four months, but following a pogrom in the fall of 1945, he fled to the West. He traveled to Germany via Czechoslovakia and settled in the Fuerth displaced persons camp. There, he married Sala on January 20, 1946. They immigrated to the United States one year later in January, 1947 on board the SS Ernie Pyle.
