Guno צְבִי
We fight, We win, Am Yisrael Chai
Michael Smuss helped smuggle supplies needed during the Jewish resistance against the Nazis; he shares how a series of ‘lucky’ accidents helped him withstand further horrors
Michael Smuss, the last known living survivor from the Warsaw Ghetto uprising, experienced unthinkable horrors during the Holocaust, confronting death every day as he experienced starvation and torture. But looking back 80 years after the end of the war, and 82 years since he participated in its most famous act of Jewish resistance, he seems to see a purpose in everything he went through.“I thank God for saving me. He pulled me out of there for a reason — so I could tell people about what happened,” Smuss said.
A former artist and master of languages, the 99-year-old Smuss was lucid-minded and sharp-tongued as he shared his journey to hell and back from his apartment in the central Israeli city of Ramat Gan. At various points in his story, he cringed with pain, got choked up with emotion, or grasped this reporter’s palm strongly with his own worn hand.