Jerzy Kosminski was born June 14, 1933 in Lodz, Poland. Although a Christian, his family had received much aid from local Poles to avoid capture. Additionally, his horrific experiences in World War II Poland and Russia caused him to be mute for much of his childhood. However, his family did eventually end up in the Warsaw ghetto, but he managed to escape during the Warsaw ghetto uprisings. Being separated from his parents, he wandered through Poland and Russia, living under the threat of being discovered and killed by the Nazis. Later, he was “eventually arrested by the Germans for his underground work, taken to the notorious Pawiak jail, and brutally tortured. He lost all his teeth, yet remained silent. He was dispatched to Auschwitz and later to Mauthausen…” Jerzy Kosminski suffered physically and mentally at the concentration camps that he was sent to, which represented the brutality and senseless …show more content…
The “Nazi forces attempted to clear out the city’s Jewish ghetto”3 on April 18, 1943. During the night of the Uprising, 17-year-old Jerzy Kozminski was selling food and necessities to the Jews in the ghetto, when he was approached by Samuel Glazer and was asked to save his family from the Nazis. A few days later, Jerzy returned to the ghetto with his mother, Renia Kozminska, and together they smuggled out all 13 members of the Glazer family one by one, in a horse and buggy.”4 Jerzy was an active courier in the Polish underground and was involved in sabotage operations. He was captured by the German Nazi’s and was tortured. Despite these events, he never revealed anything about the 13 Jews of the Glazer family who were hiding in his family's basement. “After his interrogation, Jerzy was sent to Auschwitz and from there to the Mauthausen concentration camp where he was liberated by the Americans in early May 1945. Jerzy, “emerged emaciated, unable to eat, his health broken by