San Diego (special) -- There were 1,150 Jewish names on the list maintained by German industrialist Oskar Schindler and immortalized by filmmaker Steven Spielberg. On Monday, Sept. 8, Sam Birenzweig, Number 233, died. He was 82.

He had been under hospice care for colon cancer, so his niece Miriam Wisniewski and her husband Dr. Mo Wisniewski were prepared for his death. But the actual circumstances were a source of wonderment and awe to Rabbi Yeruchem Eilfort of Chabad of La Costa, who attended him.

"He was wide awake, sitting in his bed which was tilted up, and his breathing was extremely labored," Eilfort said. "I said some prayers and he acknowledged that he knew that I was there. I asked if he wanted to say the confession--Vidui. He grunted that he wanted to. I asked if he wanted me to say it for him. He nodded his head. When I came to a pause in the prayer, he grunted 'amen' and when I got to the last line--the Shm'a Yisroel--he grunted 'amen' and then he stopped struggling to breathe."  After a short while, Birenzweig, who had rabbinical smicha from Europe, passed away. "He was waiting to say the shm'a," said Eilfort. "You

SAM BIRENZWEIG

could literally see him saying 'I am at peace.' It was an extremely powerful experience. As he stopped struggling a look of complete peace came over him, one of total tranquility."

At funeral services at El Camino Cemetery, Birenzweig's nephew said that he had been a favorite of the staff and friends at Seacrest Village Encinitas, where he had resided since 1992 after moving from New York to be near the Wisniewskis, his closest relatives. "They all referred to him as Uncle Sam."

"He used his brains well," commented Wisniewski. "He always told me that 'the brains still arbiten (work). He was very involved in learning about his health and told me often that he had learned enough and said 'I'm half a doctor myself.'"
Among fellow residents at Seacrest Village, he also was known for playing a snappy game of Pan. 

After the movie Schindler's List came out, Birenzweig began to talk about his Holocaust experiences, giving an extensive interview to the San Diego Union-Tribune, and later to the compilers of the book Schindler's Legacy.

He was 24 years old and an experience window glass manufacturer when nazi Germany invaded Poland. Along with other members of his family, he moved from his hometown of Ostrovitc to nearby Sandomierz in the mistaken belief they would be safer there. He soon was conscripted by Bomer & Lesch, a German company, to join a slave labor gang building roads in Mielec.

In 1943, he was transferred to the Hankelwerke factory in Mielec, where he fitted German warplanes with windshield glass. Whatever portion of food he received in the morning he learned to divide in half, so that he could be assured of some food at night.

By 1944, the Russians were advancing on Germany's eastern front, and Birenzweig was again transferred, this time to Wieliczka to an old, tunneled salt mine where the Germans hoped to hide a war plant. But the salt corroded the machinery parts. 

After many workers were transported to the Auschwitz death camp, Birenzweig was loaded aboard a transport. It took him to Plaszow, the factory and concentration camp associated with the City of Krakow. It was here that Schindler manufactured pots for the German army. It was here also that Birenzweig's name was placed on the list.

But, instead of being sent to the new factory which Schindler had set up in Brinnlitz, Czechoslovakia, to make bombs, Birenzweig and others were sent instead to the Gross-Rosen Concentration Camp--a notorious killing place.

In a scene made memorable in the movie, Schindler -- a war-profiteering member of the nazi party, who tried to protect "his" Jews from the death camps--demanded that the Schindlerjuden be returned to him at once, because they were needed in the factory, which was essential to the war effort.

Birenzweig was among those sent from Gross-Rosen to Brinnlitz, where he spent the remainder of the war. Schindler, he said, made certain that most munitions did not reach the nazi war machine, and those which did were mechanically flawed.

On the day before Brinnlitz was liberated, he said Schindler asked the inmates to "pray for me," adding that if he got out alive, they would too.

Schindler did survive the law, but he died long before his efforts to protect Jews were known to most of the world. 

Birenzweig, meanwhile, went to Munich, Germany, where he studied chemistry, and later to New York, where he went to work for a tire retreading company. He married Ann Liebman, who had been hidden by a Polish family, but the couple never was able to have children.

From the tire retreading company, he went next to a glass company, and eventually started his own cosmetics business. In his eulogy for Birenzweig, nephew Wisniewski reported "his boss didn't understand why he would leave a good job. His reply was 'Right now, I'm young and healthy, but when I get a little bit older, maybe you don't need me, you send me away. What am I going to do then? If I go into business, maybe I save a few dollars.'"

"He also told me another time: 'The war makes you feel...more confident in yourself. Because you've passed by so much, I was no so smart, just I was a little lucky.'"

The nephew said people in Birenzweig's circles of friends and family regarded him as a great man, not because of his connection to a celebrated event in the Holocaust, but because "he somehow touched all the people who knew him, through his caring, his kindness, his pleasant manner, his generosity, his willingness to always help, his respect for others."