Book description
Do I believe in the Thirty-Six? I believe in miracles. Sigi had just
turned 15 and was living a carefree life in Poland when WWII was
declared. Within days, Germany crossed the Polish border and randomly,
to assert their intentions, exterminated Jews and Poles. The Siegreich
family relocated further into Poland, to Bedzin, hoping the war would
pass quickly. It was not to be. Their train enroute to their new home
was attacked and they lost many of their belongings, and some friends.
Within days of setting up in Bedzin, while out shopping for food Sigi
was picked up by German soldiers and taken off with other Polish
citizens where he was forced to dig a large trench. The German soldiers
then shot the Polish men, one by one. In the first miracle of his life,
Sigi was saved by a man who grabbed him and threw him into the trench
before him. And Sigi's new life of horror, pain, drudgery, miracles and
adventures began. Sigi went on to lead the most extraordinary life in
order to survive. Operating a bicycle courier service between Jewish
ghettos in Poland, escaping from his first workcamp, working with the
Polish resistance and, toughest of all, being returned to another
workcamp where he was able to use his job in the armaments factory to
sabotage the German munitions. Here he also fell in love with Hanka who
helped him survive his last period in the workcamp when he was forced
into hiding. Only just twenty when his camp was finally liberated by the
Russians in 1945, he and Hanka determined to live a life of happiness
and love. It has taken more than six decades for Sigi Siegreich to be
able to talk to his children and grandchildren about his life in wartime
Poland - the life of a privileged young Jewish boy who witnessed heinous
acts of inhumanity he will never forget, but was also - many times -
touched by miracles. The Thirty-Six tells of Sigi's miraculous survival
and the good and bad he saw of life and humanity in Poland during WWII.
Sigi Siegreich and his family were expelled from their home when the
Germans invaded Poland in 1939. By the end of 1942, his parents and 167
members of his extended family had been exterminated in the death camps
of Treblinka, Belzec and Auschwitz. Fifteen-year-old Sigi was first
enslaved in the labour camp at Skarzysko-Kamienna and later at
Czestochowa, where he met Hanka, a young girl and fellow prisoner who
would eventually save his life. After the war ended, Sigi and Hanka
married and began to rebuild their lives. Their daughter Evelyne was the
first Jewish child born to Holocaust survivors in Katowice, Sigi's home
town. Thanks to a chance meeting with a childhood friend in Munich, Sigi
and his family eventually ended up in Melbourne, Australia, where he
established a successful import business. Now retired, Sigi is blessed
with Hanka, his loving wife for the past sixty-four years, two gorgeous
daughters, two sons-in-law, five grandchildren and four
great-grandchildren.
