Sol Rosenberg died last Friday. He lived in Monroe, Louisiana, where he owned a steel supply house.

Sol was born in Germany and moved with his family to Poland where he experienced the worst of the Holocaust. His family was wiped out. Sol fought as a teenager in the Warsaw Ghetto, and then survived horrifying experiences in Treblinka, Buchenwald, Majdanek, and ultimately Dachau where he was liberated, weighing a little over 60 pounds.

He married another survivor, Tola, and ended up in Louisiana, where he raised a family of five children.

I met him through a steel association meeting and invited him to speak at a Yom Hashoah (holocaust memorial) program at the synagogue. I had radio and newspaper coverage and we had a record turnout for the program. He also spoke at the Monday Rotary and a class of students at Stratford Academy.

Sol was in excellent health and energetic well into his eighties. He had a terrific ethnic sense of humor and I used to love sharing stories and jokes with him. He could tell a story like only someone fluent in Yiddish could.

He rarely spoke of his experience in Europe until the Nazi David Duke ran for Governor of Louisiana. The thought of a Nazi gaining any political power in his new beloved home was unbearable. He collected his memories and historian Richard Chardkoff published them under the title “Sol’s Story”. I have read many stories of the holocaust but few could match Sol’s.

No collection of stories about Rebel Yids would be complete without Sol’s. As the survivors and witnesses to this period and age and pass on, we are challenged to keep their memories and stories alive.

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