Holocaust Survivor Band Returns Home To Poland

Sumaira FH Published July 28, 2016 | 11:13 AM

WARSAW, (APP - UrduPoint / Pakistan Point News - 28th july,2016) - They survived the Holocaust, and held on to their love of life despite their childhood ordeal -- and in their twilight years, now living in the United States, they started a band. This week, the two grandfathers returned to their homeland Poland to pay their respects to the victims of the Nazi German genocide, and to perform at the site of Warsaw's wartime Jewish ghetto. Peering at the crowd from behind his drum set on Wednesday night in the capital, 91-year-old Saul Dreier yelled into the mic: "Is everybody happy?" The crowd cheered. The dynamic duo came to "play for the people that perished and to play for the peace of the world.

As simple as that," the retired building contractor told AFP. Dreier, who welcomed his first great-grandchild last week, survived three concentration camps and lost most of his family in World War II.

"My parents were burned in Treblinka. Either Treblinka, Majdanek or Belzec. I don't know which one," he told AFP, referring to death camps set up by Nazi Germany in occupied Poland. "And the rest was burnt in Auschwitz," the largest Nazi German death camp where 1.1 million people, mostly European Jews, lost their lives. While Dreier sometimes joins in, the lead singer in the band is Reuwen "Ruby" Sosnowicz, who also plays accordion and keyboard. Together, they mainly perform klezmer music -- traditional Jewish songs from Eastern Europe. Sosnowicz, 88, was back in his native Warsaw for the first time since he escaped the ghetto and hid in a barn for three years thanks to a kind Polish farmer.