Holocaust Survivor Shaya Slomovits Celebrates 100th Birthday

Children and grandchildren celebrated the 100th birthday of Holocaust survivor Shaya Slomovits Sunday, and shared his history with Belaaz.

Below are their words:

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Our Zaidy, Shaya Slomovits shlita, was born Rosh Chodesh Sivan, May 24, 1925 to a family of Satmar Chassidim in Serdehel, Czechoslovakia.

His father, R’ Menachem Mendel, was a shochet and a Chazan who grew up very close with the Satmar Rav. (He was a shamash/ hoiz bochur).

When R’ Menachem Mendel was older and married, he worked as a Chazzan and Shochet in Serdehel.

He was sent to the Dachau labor camp and was liberated after the war, though he got sick and passed away two years
later in 1947, but not before reuniting with our Zayde in a hospital when a notice was sent informing him that his father was there. R’ Menachem Mendel is buried in Germany.

Our Zayde has described to me their reunion in that hospital.

Zaidy was one of 8 children. They grew up in a one bedroom home. Before the war, Zaidy was recognized for his rich voice and was relatively young when he was asked to lead the tefillos for the first time one Rosh Hashana at the age of about 15. The older Chazan said the kehilla asked for him to lead the second day tefillos.

As Zaidy grew up he went away to learn in Berekszas. There he often ate at his future wife’s house. Our Bobby’s father and Zaidy’s father both used to find people from shul who didn’t have a place to eat and they stretched their food supply to
care for others (neither family had much).

When Zaidy was around 18 he was taken to the Munkatabor labor camp. They had to dig ditches for the army to hide from the Russians. He and other young men his age were saved from the concentration camps by a Hungarian from their town who selected these boys to work.

He kept his bar mitzvah tefillin with him hidden and was only without
them for a few days when he tried to escape. He was found by the SS guards and would he have been sent to a concentration camp or killed immediately, but miraculously the Nazis were called away to the front lines and the Hungarian army took over and had him sent back to the labor camp.

Zaidy still has that pair of tefillin, which were written by a cousin of his.

His three youngest siblings were killed in Auschwitz (approximate
ages: Malka Sara around age 10, Ezriel Meir, age 18, Leah, age 15)

To this day, he doesn’t know what happened with his brother Tzvi, who was 20 when they last saw each other.

Zaidy’s siblings Rivka (Rifchu), Eliyahu Betzalel (Tzali), and Yosef Mordechai also survived.

Yosef Mordechai passed away a few days after liberation in Ungvar possibly
from Typhus. My grandfather has described him as a tzaddik, who
refused to eat treif during the war.
Tzali’s wife Rita is BH alive and living in Lakewood. Their children
are R’ Mendy Slomovits (Lakewood), Dudi Slomovits (Brooklyn) and Simy
Bernath (Monsey)

Rifchu married Leiby Yitzchok Pollak, their children are Suzy Netzer
(Italy), and Miriam Adler (Lawrence).