Uma terrível, ao mesmo tempo bela história, daquilo que em inglês se chama endurance, que pode ser traduzido por resistência. Uma história de indiziveis sofrimentos, sob o regime mais bárbaro jamais concebido e aplicado pela mente humana. Estava tudo previsto, desde uma década e meia antes da concretização do Holocausto, no tristemente famoso Mein Kampf. Muitos não acreditaram que toda aquela loucura fosse realizável, mesmo o regime exatamente oposto, mas similar no totalitarismo, que acabou fazendo uma aliança satânica com o maior projeto destruidor jamais empreendido na história da humanidade, o que justamente permitiu o início da mais destruidora das guerras vista até aqui. Que a História não se repita, desta vez com armas ainda mais terríveis.
Josef Leib Schneider, born August 28, 1900, in Narol, a small Polish town, grew up in a centuries-old Jewish community, mastering the tailor's trade. In the 1920s, like many young Polish Jews seeking opportunity, he moved to Antwerp, Belgium. There, he married Debora Sandbank, and they built a life, raising two children, Luis and Regina. Josef worked as a tailor, contributing to Antwerp's vibrant Jewish textile industry before the war.
In May 1940, Nazi Germany invaded Belgium. The Schneiders, like thousands of other Belgian Jews, made the desperate decision to flee to France, hoping to escape the German advance. However, France fell within weeks, and by 1942, the Nazi occupation's murderous reach extended across French territory.
Josef was captured and sent to Drancy, the internment camp near Paris that served as the primary deportation point for Jews from France. Drancy was a terrifying holding pen where families were torn apart, awaiting the transports universally known to lead to death.
On September 4, 1942, Josef was forced into a cattle car. Transport number 29 from Drancy to Auschwitz carried 1,000 Jews; only 16 would survive. Josef Leib Schneider was one of them.
At Auschwitz-Birkenau, he endured unimaginable horrors: slave labor, starvation, disease, relentless brutality, and the daily witnessing of mass murder. He saw trainloads of people—families, children, the elderly—arrive and vanish into gas chambers within hours. He survived selections where SS doctors, in mere seconds, decided who would live and who would die. He survived crushing physical labor, insufficient food, freezing cold, and the diseases that claimed thousands.
As the Soviet Army approached in January 1945, the Nazis evacuated Auschwitz, forcing prisoners on what became known as Death Marches—brutal forced marches in freezing winter conditions, claiming thousands of lives from exhaustion, cold, or execution by guards. Josef survived this Death March and was transferred to Buchenwald concentration camp in Germany, enduring additional months of suffering as the Nazi regime crumbled.
As Allied forces closed in, he was moved again, this time to Theresienstadt (Terezín) in what is now the Czech Republic. There, in May 1945, he was finally liberated by Soviet troops. Josef Leib Schneider had survived Drancy, Auschwitz, the Death March, Buchenwald, and Theresienstadt. He had endured nearly three years in Nazi concentration camps—a journey that killed the vast majority who experienced even one of these hells.
Years later, his granddaughter Shelley English asked him the perennial question posed to survivors: "How did you survive?" His answer was simple and profound: he kept the image of his wife and children in his mind. He knew he had to survive to be with them at war's end. Not superhuman strength, not luck, but the fierce determination to reunite with his family—to hold Debora, embrace Luis and Regina, and rebuild the life the Nazis had tried to destroy.
And, in an almost miraculous, yet tragic, twist, Debora, Luis, and Regina had also survived. Many Holocaust families were not so fortunate, with entire lineages murdered within hours of arrival. The Schneiders' survival, separated by war and imprisonment, was extraordinarily rare.
After liberation and the agonizing process of searching for and finding each other amidst the chaos of postwar Europe, the Schneider family was reunited. In 1948, like hundreds of thousands of other Holocaust survivors, they emigrated to the United States, settling in New York City. Josef returned to his trade, tailoring, working on Second Avenue in Manhattan, stitching fabric, making clothes, and meticulously rebuilding a quiet, ordinary life—the very life the Nazis had tried to eradicate.
He never became wealthy, nor did he seek attention or recognition. He simply desired what the Nazis had attempted to strip from him: peace, family, the simple dignity of earning a living, and watching his children grow. And grow they did. They thrived, having children of their own—grandchildren Josef was blessed to know and love. He witnessed them live what Americans call "the Dream"—education, opportunity, safety, and freedom.
Josef Leib Schneider passed away in 1981 at the age of 81, having lived 36 years after liberation. He never met his great-grandchildren, but his granddaughter Shelley ensures they know his story. She shares: "He was a good man—a humble and private man—with simple needs. All he wanted was to live in peace with his family and see his grandchildren thrive. He found that peace on Second Avenue in New York City, as he watched his children and grandchildren live out what was considered 'the American Dream'. He never met his great-grandchildren, but all of them know how blessed we were to be born into relative freedom, and how Joseph and Dora Schneider never took that freedom for granted."
This is why individual Holocaust stories must be remembered. Not solely to state that "six million Jews were murdered"—though that truth is paramount. But to remember that each of those six million was a unique person: Josef Leib Schneider, Debora Sandbank. People with names, families, trades, and dreams.
Among the survivors, each holds a story of unimaginable suffering and improbable resilience. Josef kept his family's faces in his mind through Auschwitz, through the Death March, through Buchenwald, through Theresienstadt. That image—Debora, Luis, Regina—was what sustained him when every other force argued for death.
Today, his descendants live in a freedom he helped preserve by refusing to perish, by surviving when the Nazi system was engineered to kill him. They understand their blessings, knowing their grandfather and grandmother never took freedom for granted. By sharing Josef's story, they ensure that his memory—and the memory of what he survived—lives on.
Zachor. Remember. Not just the statistics, but the individuals.
Josef Leib Schneider. Born August 28, 1900, in Narol. Survived Auschwitz. Died free in New York, 1981, surrounded by the family he fought to return to. His story is one among millions, but it is his story. And it deserves to be told.
