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Samuel Pisar was born in 1929 in the northeastern Polish town of Białystok. His parents were educated in a post-partition Polish territory that had been part of the Russian Empire since the early nineteenth century—they attended a Russian school, spoke Russian, and were part of the overarching [Imperial Russian]] cultural sphere. After a brief interregnum between the two world wars, the nascent [[Second Polish Republic]] was again partitioned under the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]]. Białystok initially fell under [[Soviet]] control, his father’s local taxi business was nationalized, and a young Pisar was sent to a Russian-language school where he joined the youth division of the [[Soviet Communist Party]] and developed an interest in Russian literature—many decades later, he said that he is still able to quote Russian poets [[Pushkin]] and [[Lermontov]] by heart.

Samuel Pisar was born in 1929 in the northeastern Polish town of Białystok. His parents were educated in a post-partition Polish territory that had been part of the Russian Empire since the early nineteenth century—they attended a Russian school, spoke Russian, and were part of the overarching [Imperial Russian]] cultural sphere. After a brief interregnum between the two world wars, the nascent [[Second Polish Republic]] was again partitioned under the [[Molotov-Ribbentrop pact]]. Białystok initially fell under [[Soviet]] control, his father’s local taxi business was nationalized, and a young Pisar was sent to a Russian-language school where he joined the youth division of the [[Soviet Communist Party]] and developed an interest in Russian literature—many decades later, he said that he is still able to quote Russian poets [[Pushkin]] and [[Lermontov]] by heart.

Białystok was occupied by the Germans in 1941. Amid massacres against the [[Jewish]] population, Pisar’s father was arrested and executed for taking part in a resistance group and Samuel was transferred along several concentration camps throughout the war. He was evacuated from [[Auschwitz]] to [[Dachau]] following the [[Red Army]]’s westward offensive. While on a death march near [[Munich]], he said that he and fourteen others fled into the woods after a ground strike by an [[American]] bomber squadron that allegedly mistook his four-thousand-man prisoner convoy for [[German]] soldiers. He was rescued by the [[U.S. Army]] shortly thereafter.

Białystok was [[Operation Barbarossa|occupied by the Germans in 1941]]. Amid massacres against the [[Jewish]] population, Pisar’s father was arrested and executed for taking part in a resistance group and Samuel was transferred along several concentration camps throughout the war. He was evacuated from [[Auschwitz]] to [[Dachau]] following the [[Red Army]]’s westward offensive. While on a death march near [[Munich]], he said that he and fourteen others fled into the woods after a ground strike by an [[American]] bomber squadron that allegedly mistook his four-thousand-man prisoner convoy for [[German]] soldiers. He was rescued by the [[U.S. Army]] shortly thereafter.

===Up to 1939===

===Up to 1939===