From the FACES OF DYNÓW series:

Sam Nager
oil on canvas, 48 x 42 inches

Sam Nager was my great uncle, my grandmother Bella’s brother. He was born in Dynów, the youngest of five children from Avraham Neger and Ryfka, Avraham’s second wife. Avraham came to the marriage with five of his eight children from his first wife, Taube who died in 1914. Avraham, in partnership with his father and his three brothers, was a kosher butcher and cattle dealer in Dynów. On September 15, 1939, the second day of Rosh Hashanah, the Nazis invaded and massacred the Jews in Dynów. Sam, who was nine years old at the time, spent one and a half years in hiding with a poor farmer and his daughter before he wound up in Buchenwald, where Allied forces eventually liberated him in 1945. After a period in a displaced person (DP) camp in Europe, Sam came to New York in 1947. He took an offer for housing and employment in Duluth, Minnesota where he married Fay and began to rebuild his life.