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| Auschwitz escapee Herskovic dies at 91
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William Herskovic
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William Herskovic, an Auschwitz escapee who alerted the Belgian resistance to the atrocities of the Holocaust, causing hundreds of Jews to be saved, died last week, aged 91.
Herskovic who passed away at his California home after a lengthy battle with cancer, escaped from the infamous death camp in 1942, along with two other inmates.
The trio who cut through a chain-link fence using a pair of wire cutters they’d stashed in the snow, were amongst a group of only a few successful escapees from Auschwitz. Most were recaptured within 24 hours and executed upon their return.
Great escape
Together with his fellow escapees, Herskovic traveled across Europe, using the proceeds of the sale of a diamond he had embedded in the heel of his shoe, to cover travel expenses.
Upon arriving in his hometown of Antwerp, Herskovic met with the leaders of the Belgian Underground Press, a group of unauthorized newspapers which informed against Nazi propaganda.
His account of what was taking place in the concentration camps , one of the earliest first hand accounts of Nazi horrors, soon reached other publications and broadcasting outlets, among them the BBC which issued a warning to Jews.
The Belgian resistance also acted on Herskovic’s information, placing bricks on a train track to stop a train packed with Jews bound to the camps. About 250 prisoners escaped.
Lives saved
The Simon Wiesenthal Center said that all together "several hundred Jews were saved," thanks to Herskovic.
Herskovic spent the rest of the war in hiding in Belgium. In 1945 he married Maria the younger sister of his first wife who was murdered in Auschwitz along with their two daughters. After the war the couple remained in Belguim for 10 years before emigrating to the USA with their three daughters. They settled in Los Angeles and set up a successful camera business which the family still runs.
In 1995 Herskovic’s wartime experiences and those of his wife Maria, who hid with her parents, risking her life daily to provide food for them, were documented in a book written by their daughter Patricia Herskovic.
In a tribute to Herskovic, Rabbi Marvin Hier founder and dean of the Simon Wiesnthal Center said: "As a survivor of the Holocaust, William Herskovic knew very well how important our mission to fight anti-Semitism around the world was and tried to assist us at every opportunity. He will be dearly missed."
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