Table Of Contentmy>inn rn>*n
Claims Conference
Conference on Jewish Material Claims
Against Germany
D /
Claims Conference Holocaust Survivor
Memoir Collection
Access to the print and/or digital copies of memoirs in this collection is
made possible by USHMM on behalf of, and with the support of, the
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany.
The United States Holocaust Memorial Museum Library respects the copyright and
intellectual property rights associated with the materials in its collection. The Library holds the
rights and permissions to put this material online. If you hold an active copyright to this work
and would like to have your materials removed from the web please contact the USHMM
Library by phone at 202-479-9717, or by email at [email protected].
Digitized by the Internet Archive
in 2019 with funding from
Conference on Jewish Material Claims Against Germany, Inc.
https://archive.org/details/theytriedtokillm01gure
THEY TRIED TO KILL ME
Revised version 2001
Saul Gurevitz and Miriam Sidran
Submitted to the Holocaust Survivors’ Memoirs Project
World Jewish Congress
501 Madison Avenue
New York, NY 10022
Photographs available on request. Many of them have messages on the back,
written in Yiddish or Hebrew. Photographs taken in France have French
inscriptions, and those from Switzerland have German inscriptions.
l)j
\%0
L43
bV
100
\
ABOUT THE AUTHORS:
Saul Gurevitz
Dr. Saul Gurevitz was bom in Vilna, Poland in 1920. He was educated in Vilna, in
Grenoble, France and in Zurich, Switzerland. He is a survivor of the Nazi
Holocaust of 1939-1945. Since 1948, he has been a practicing psychoanalyst in
New York and Boston. He was an early member of the National Psychological
Association for Psychoanalysis in New York, and he served as its Vice President,
and also its Chairman of the Board, for many years. He was well known as a
specialist in treating schizophrenic children, and has published extensively in this
field.
In 1961, Dr. Gurevitz took a ten-year leave of absence from his practice to become
a full-time painter and sculptor in Cape Cod, Massachusetts. He earned a living by
selling his art, and he had several exhibitions in New York and Cape Cod.
In addition to his professional publications, Dr. Gurevitz has written poems and
short stories in English, Yiddish and German. Many of these have been published.
Dr. Gurevitz lives in Brookline, Massachusetts. He is divorced, and he has two
daughters who live in Massachusetts.
Miriam Sidran
Dr. Miriam Sidran was bom in Washington, D.C. in 1920, and educated in New
York City. During World War II, she worked on the early development of sonar at
Bell Laboratories, and on the early development of radar at Columbia University.
She has taught physics, chemistry and astronomy at several universities, and has
held positions at several industrial laboratories, including Grumman Aerospace
Corporation, where she worked on the space program. She has published
extensively in many fields, including lunar surface studies, radiation dosimetry,
spectroscopy, electrophotography, oceanography, atmospheric sciences, and remote
sensing from satellites. She holds a patent on a radiation dosimeter.
In 1990, she retired from Baruch College of the City University of New York as
Professor Emerita of Physics and Astronomy. She lives in New York City.
This book is dedicated to the memory of my parents, Israel and Hana Gurewicz, my
sister Tamara and her husband Lippa, my grandparents, Genya and Aron
Aronowicz, and all of my aunts, uncles, cousins and friends, who were murdered at
Ponary in 1941.
1
h ■ T
They Tried to Kill Me
By Saul Gurevitz and Miriam Sidran
Preface:
I am a survivor of the Nazi Holocaust. In 1989,1 spent a week in front of a
camcorder, recounting the saga of my life, from my birth in Poland in 1920, until the
time of the recording. The video tape, which runs for twelve hours, forms the basis
of this book. It tells the story of my survival during the Holocaust. In addition to
the Germans, the chief villains in my story are the Poles, the Lithuanians, the French
and the Swiss. The heroes are the good people of all nationalities who helped me
survive.
In 1997, at the age of 77,1 met a woman my age, and we fell in love. It has been a
storybook romance. She persuaded me to write this book, and she helped me write
it. Without her encouragement, devotion and labor, this book would not have been
written. It has been a labor of love.
i
!
Pll Redacted
i
Date: November 13, 2000.
References:
1. N. N. Shneidman, “Jerusalem of Lithuania: The rise and fall of Jewish Vilnius,”
Mosaic Press, Oakville, ON, Canada, 1998, 188 pages.
2. Encyclopedia Britannica, Multimedia Edition on Compact Disk, 1998.
3. Lucy S. Dawidowicz, “From That Place and Time, a Memoir 1938=1947,”
Bantam Books, New York, 1989, 333 pages.
n
