Martin Small, who gave voice to the agony of the Holocaust in his artwork, poems and the memoir Remember Us, passed away Nov. 29, 2008. He was 91.
Rabbi Marc Soloway of Bonai Shalom officiated at the Nov. 30 service held at Har HaShem in Boulder. Interment followed at Crist Mountain View Memorial Park. Crist Mortuary made the arrangements.
Diagnosed with pancreatic cancer earlier this year, Mr. Small devoted all his strength to completing Remember Us, which was co-authored by Vic Shayne.
All the proceeds from the memoir were used to purchase a Torah for Bonai Shalom.
Mordechai Schmulevicz was born in 1916 in Molczadz, Poland.
Thirty-five thousand Jews including 84 members of Mr. Smalls family were killed by their Polish neighbors shortly after the Nazis occupied Belarus in 1942.
Only Mr. Small and two cousins escaped the mass murder.
He was then transported to the Baranowicze ghetto but ultimately escaped and found refuge with a Gentile family that hid Jews in their farmhouse.
One day the Nazis came to the farm and demanded to know whether there were Jews on the premises. The woman denied the accusation, and the Nazis broke her legs. Still she said nothing.
Mr. Small and a friend left the farmhouse.
I just couldnt do it to these people anymore, he told the IJN in an interview published in the Fall, 2004, LChaim magazine.
He was caught and sent to Kodleczewa, a labor camp, but managed to escape.
After wandering for a month, he heard a train and headed toward what he thought might be a station. A German grabbed him and screamed, Why are you running away from the train?
He marched me to the train, and I was so happy to think Id be able to sit down and rest, Mr. Small told the IJN.
The train was full of Hungarian and Polish Jews being transported to Mauthausen, the notorious Austrian concentration camp.
At Mauthausen, Jewish inmates called Mr. Small the rabbi because he could recite the Jewish prayers by heart.
When the Americans liberated Mauthausen in 1945, Mr. Small weighed 75 pounds. He told the IJN that he could not remember the day of his liberation. We were dead people, he said.
After spending many months in DP camps, Mr. Small left for Italy.
Once there, he volunteered with the Hagganah smuggling Jews into Palestine.
Mr. Small went to Israel in 1948 and fought in the War of Independence.
He came to the US in 1950.
In 1951, Mr. Small married Doris Gustin in New York.
Mr. Small became a milliner and later went into real estate.
Upon his retirement in the 1980s, he began creating works of art that have been exhibited at Yad Vashem and throughout the world.
I had no idea he had it in him, his wife Doris says.
The Smalls moved to Boulder in 2003.
Mr. Small is survived by his wife Doris Small; daughter Miriam (Bill) Saunders; grandchildren Jennifer (John) and Jacob (Jennifer); and six great-grandchildren.
He was predeceased by his son Michael.
Contributions may be made to Bonai Shalom or the charity of choice.
Read the IJN editorial eulogizing Martin Small.
