Michael Samos

Michael Samos was born in 1926 in Gdańsk

Smuss was born in Danzig on 15 April 1926 to David and Margarete Smuss. After the Nazis took over the city, Jewish children were barred from public schools and his father taught him at home. The family moved to Lodz when he was 12.

During World War II he and his father were sent to the Warsaw Ghetto, while his mother and sister Frida stayed outside. He joined Hashomer Hatzair and the ŻOB, stole paint thinner for Molotov cocktails and threw them from rooftops in April 1943. After the uprising he passed through Budzyń, where his father was shot, then Auschwitz and Flossenbürg.

In April 1945 he escaped a death march to Dachau and reached a farm in Stamsried. He was taken by an American ambulance to a hospital in Idar-Oberstein. He later reunited with his mother and sister and moved to New York.

In 1956 he completed his high school diploma and studied accounting at the City College of New York. He moved to Israel in 1979, settled in Tel Aviv, worked in hotels and began painting professionally. His collection Reflections of a Survivor, with 38 works, is shown at the Florida Holocaust Museum.

He lived in Ramat Gan in his later years and took part in Holocaust remembrance events. In September 2025 he received Germany's Order of Merit. He died on 21 October 2025.