Meyer Arrives At Auschwitz

In 1942, Meyer Hack, was deported to Auschwitz with his mother, brother and two sisters. The women were murdered upon arrival. He promised the world he would survive.

He was forced to sort through the tattered clothing stripped off inmates before they were sent to the gas chambers."I was not human. I was a piece of meat, a robot," he said, his accented voice cracking as he rubbed tears from his eyes. "But I said 'I want to survive' ... my heart told me 'I will survive.' I kept telling myself: 'Don't die, don't die, don't give up.'"  7


 

The Nazis Made Him A Tailor

Hack lied to his Auschwitz captors and told them he was a tailor, which earned him a transfer to the "clothing chamber." There he discovered the exquisite items _ rings, wristwatches, bracelets and pendents _ amid piles of clothes, and was never able to determine who their owners were. He safeguarded the jewelry, hiding the items in a hole he dug in the ground.

He Lived In The Forest

In 1945, he took the jewelry with him on death marches to the Dachau camp and later to Munich, from where he escaped to the forests until liberation.

The Hidden Jewelry

On Monday, the 95-year-old survivor from Boston donated eight pieces of gold, silver and diamond-studded jewelry to Israel's Holocaust memorial, Yad Vashem, as a tribute to the original owners, who perished.