Shlomo Selinger

Shelomo Selinger
Shelomo Selinger in his studio
Born	(1928-05-31) May 31, 1928 (age 89) Szczakowa, Poland
Website	http://www.museum-selinger.net/

Shelomo Selinger (born May 31, 1928) is a French-Israeli sculptor and artist, living and working in Paris since 1956.

Shelomo Selinger was born to a Jewish family in Poland in the small town of Szczakowa (today part of Jaworzno) near Oświęcim (Auschwitz). He received both a traditional Jewish upbringing and a Polish public school education. In 1943 he was deported with his father from the Chrzanów ghetto to the Faulbrück concentration camp in Germany. Three months later his father was murdered and Shelomo remained alone in the camp. His mother as well as one of his sisters also perished during the Holocaust. Shelomo Selinger survived nine German death camps: Faulbrück, Gröditz, Markstadt, Fünfteichen, Gross-Rosen, Flossenburg, Dresden, Leitmeritz and finally Theresienstadt, as well as two death marches.

He was discovered, still breathing, on a stack of dead bodies when the Terezin camp was liberated in 1945 by the Red Army. The Jewish military doctor who pulled Shelomo out of the pile of corpses transferred him to a military field hospital where he was taken care of and where he came back to life. He recovered his health but lost his memory and for seven years was completely amnesic to his past sufferings and horrors.

In 1946 Shelomo Selinger boarded the Tel Haï, a ship leaving La Ciotat and headed to the then British Mandate Palestine with a group of young death camps survivors who, with the help of the Jewish Brigade of the British Army, had crossed illegally the borders of Germany, Belgium and France. The ship was seized outside the territorial waters of Haifa by the British Royal Navy. The passengers, none of whom had a legal immigration certificate, were interned in the Atlit detainee camp.