Spitzer, Samuel

Personal Papers Archives

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Authority Biography/Administrative HistorySam Spitzer is a Holocaust survivor. After the Holocaust, he reworked an address made at the Conference of the International Federation of Secular and Humanist Jews in Detroit- October 27-30, 1986. He endowed a gate at the Randwick Montefiore Home at the King Street entrance, which was named the Rosa Robota Gate, in honour of a twenty-three-year-old Auschwitz heroine who was one of three women involved in smuggling in explosives and blowing off the roof of one of the crematoria on 7th October 1944. Subsequently, the Germans destroyed the four other crematoria, thereby saving countless Jewish lives. Rosa was caught and was hanged on 6th January 1945, aged twenty-three, just eleven days before the advancing Soviet Army liberated her camp. Her last words were "'hazak v'amatz': be strong and brave." The reason for the gate is to serve as a counter symbol to the Auschwitz gate which bore the inscription "Arbeit macht frei". Those who walked through that gate were marked for death. He saw those walking through the Rosa Robota gate (and taking up residence in the home) as having their life spans extended and their life styles improved.
ProvenanceSPITZER, Samuel (SPITZERS)
Dates(s)1996
Scope & ContentHis papers consist of a number of photocopies of faxed letters and newspaper articles on matters to do with the Sho'ah, including The Rebbe and the Holocaust (AJN 5/7/1998) and an article by Yehuda Bauer Judaism