Helen ‘Halina’ Silber, of ‘Schindler’s List’ Fame, Dies at 93

October 31, 2022 JMORE Staff

Helen "Halina" Silber: "Schindler, with his kindness, gave us help ... and most important, he gave us our dignity," (Photo courtesy of Sol Levinson & Bros.)

Helen “Halina” Brunengraber Silber, who was among the more than 1,200 Holocaust survivors famously rescued by German industrialist and righteous gentile Oskar Schindler during World War II, died on Oct. 25. The Pikesville resident was 93.

Silber was only 10 when Nazi Germany invaded Poland, and 13 when she and her family fled from their home in Kraków to the small nearby town of Słomniki.

After learning of the Nazis’ relocation plans for the Jews, Silber’s mother instructed her to discard her Star of David armband and flee to a forced labor camp near Krakow where her siblings were already interned.

“Little did I know this was going to be our last goodbye,” Silber told a Frederick audience in 2013.

After that camp closed, they were taken to the Krakow Ghetto and from there sent to Camp Plaszow, after which she and her siblings were separated. She worked in Camp Płaszów’s laundry until being selected to work in a nearby enamelware factory producing pots and pans. The factory was owned and operated by Oskar Schindler.

“My job was to carry the heavy pots and pans to the oven to bake in the enamel,” she told a synagogue audience in 2019. “The heat and weight were unbearable. I didn’t believe I would survive for very long.”

Schindler, who frequented the factory floor, took notice and reassigned Silber to cleaning the factory offices.

When that factory closed in late 1944, Silber and the other members were sent on a train meant for Schindler’s ammunition factory in Czechoslovakia. However, the train was diverted to Auschwitz. Silber and the others were taken off the train. “I could smell burning flesh coming from all directions,” she told John Carroll School students in 2016.

Silber said she and the other workers felt there was no longer room for hope. But Schindler demanded that his workers be retrieved from Auschwitz. The list of workers to be rescued and taken to the Czechoslovakia factory would become known as “Schindler’s List,” immortalized in the Thomas Keneally book and the Academy Award-winning film by Steven Spielberg.

Silber said she was number 16 on the list. The “Schindler’s List” members worked in the entrepreneur’s ammunition factory until May 8, 1945, when Soviet forces liberated them.

“Schindler, with his kindness, gave us help … and most important, he gave us our dignity,” Silber told her Frederick audience in 2013. “For us, he was an angel sent by God to save us.”

Last year around the time of Holocaust Remembrance Day, Silber told WBAL-TV, “It is very hard to believe, for people, what happened [during the Holocaust]. It is even harder for us who went through that. We got out of it alive. … It can happen to any people, and this was such an important lesson. Be vigilant to the kind of leaders we are dealing with.”

In 1951, Silber moved to the United States and resettled in Baltimore. In 1967, she opened a local imported fabric business called Boutique Fabrics, which she ran for nearly four decades.

After the “Schindler’s List” film came out in 1993, she began speaking in public about her wartime experiences.

At a Holocaust Remembrance Day event in 2015 at a local school, Silber said, “You are the last generation to hear of our suffering and the miracles by which we survived the Holocaust. Many of the Holocaust survivors have already passed away and so, when the rest of us will be gone, we hope that you will keep reminding the world of our past.”

Silber is survived by her children, Fran Silber (Dr. Steven) Pruce and Dr. Harry (Ruth) Silber; grandchildren, Alan (Caroline) Pruce, Cheryl Pruce, Joshua Silber, Jeremy Silber and Matthew Silber; great-grandchildren, David Pruce, Joshua Pruce, Lena Pruce and Ian Pruce; and many nieces and nephews. She was predeceased by her husband, Dr. David Silber; son, Gabriel Silber; parents, Golda and Abraham Brunengraber; and siblings, Mates (Wanda) Bruner, Helen (Jacob) Wischnia, Berta (Daniel) Muller, Morris (Sophie) Brunengraber, David (Olga) Brunengraber, Eliezar Brunengraber, Sabina Brunengraber and Simon Brunengraber.

Services for Silber were held at at Sol Levinson & Bros. funeral home on Oct. 28. Interment was at Beth Tfiloh Cemetery, 5800 Windsor Mill Rd.

Contributions in her memory may be sent to Beth Tfiloh Dahan Community School Scholarship Fund, 3300 Old Court Rd., Baltimore, Maryland 21208 or the U.S. Holocaust Memorial Museum, 100 Raoul Wallenberg Place, SW, Washington, D.C. 20024, or the charity of your choice.