The Arbiser Family Collection

Samuel Arbiser was born on September 19, 1919 in Warsaw, Poland, the first child born to parents Pola and Jacob. This picture shows Sam (the middle child) with his mother, cousin (on far left), and brother Nathan. Following the family trade of foundry work and machine building, Sam attended a technical high school in the city. He excelled in the machine shop, even receiving a grade of ‘5’ from a teacher who had previously never given out a grade that high before. He graduated from high school in 1939, just a few months before the invasion of the German army.

After the end of the war in Europe, Sam left Kemerovo and traveled back to his hometown of Warsaw. He discovered that his entire family that had remained in the city during the war had perished at the death camp of Treblinka. Every building related to Sam’s childhood was gone. For the next four years Sam lived in the city of Wroclaw, Poland and worked as a schoolteacher. Sam, Nathan, and Nathan’s wife Frieda eventually decided to move to Israel. They arrived at the Israeli port of Haifa in January 1950. Sam soon found a job at the Vulcan factory and foundry, working his way up to the position of head of the machine building department. As a man living in Israel, he also was a member of the army reserves.

At the start of the war, Drohobycz fell briefly into German hands. The Germans allowed the population to “take care” of the Jewish members of the population, resulting in hundreds of deaths. The Russians soon took over control of the city due to the Nonaggression Pact. However, this did not end the problems plaguing the Bienstocks. Russian secret policemen lived in their house, Pola’s father’s business was confiscated, and the family was forced to leave their house and belongings.The German army retook the town in June of 1941 after they broke their treaty with the Russians. Once again, they let the town’s citizens loose on the Jewish population. The Bienstocks returned to their hometown after the German takeover.

The Germans established a ghetto in Drohobycz in October 1942. One day after the move there Frania came and asked Pola’s mother to give her the children to hide. One by one over the next few months, Pola’s sister Irene, Pola’s mother Sara, and lastly, Pola herself made the trek to Frania’s apartment, where she lived alone. Pola’s father Israel had to stay behind due to a chronic cough. For the next two years, the three lived in Frania’s apartment, spending the day speaking in whispers and writing while Frania worked across the street at the Gestapo office.

The Russian army liberated Drohobycz in 1945 and the Bienstocks emerged from hiding. They were unable to speak above a whisper due to the years of near silence. Only around 400 Jews emerged from hiding.  Altogether, German soldiers killed or sent away at least 9,500 Jews from the town proper and the surrounding villages. After discovering that their town would become part of Ukraine, the Bienstocks and Frania decided to leave their town since they wanted to stay in Poland. Pola documented their journey in the journal pictured here. While on the journey, her father met up with them. He had miraculously survived numerous concentration and labor camps until Americans liberated the camp of Flossenberg. The family continued to travel together and decided to settle in Legnica, Poland, where they stayed for the next two years.

Sam and Pola met through a mutual friend on the streets of Tel Aviv. They dated for around one year, then decided to get married in 1954. For several years, the couple lived separately, as Pola was finishing up her studies in Jerusalem and, at the beginning of their married life, Sam still worked at Vulcan in Haifa. Soon, Sam switched his workplace, now working for Hamat on the outskirts of Tel Aviv as a chief engineer. After Pola graduated, the couple lived together in Tel Aviv. Pola worked as a bacteriologist at a hospital, then later a researcher at a research institute.

One day, Sam was at an exhibition and conference in Germany, where an American company invited him to Chicago to work for them. Sam accepted the invitation and decided right then that he and Pola would move to the United States. Pola was heartbroken; she loved her friends, her job, and the country that she had lived in for over 10 years. However, she went along with her husband’s plan. The couple landed in New York City in December 1960. Sam headed towards Chicago, while Pola went with Sam's cousin's wife to Atlanta. Pola loved Atlanta and convinced her husband to leave Chicago and find a job in Atlanta instead. Sam found work at the Meadows Manufacturing Company. Pola worked in a lab at Emory University, where she later also received her Ph.D. The couple began to adjust to the American way of life.

During the summer of 1976, Frania visited the United States, visiting both Irene and her family in New Jersey and Pola’s family in Atlanta. Although Pola and Irene had both stayed in constant contact with her and supported her financially, the sisters and Frania had not seen each other in almost 30 years. Frania was worried that Pola would not recognize her, but when they reunited, this was not the case; the two women recognized each other immediately and were overjoyed to see each other again. Pola formally introduced Sam to Frania, after years of him only reading her numerous letters of correspondence. It was very hard for Pola and Frania to separate at the end of her 6-week visit. Frania passed away one year later.

In 1999, the William Breman Jewish Heritage Museum held a ceremony dedicating the theater in the Arbiser name. The Arbisers had been avid supporters of the museum, coming in often to talk to students about their past. At this same ceremony, the Israeli government presented a Yad Vashem certificate that named Frania as a “Righteous Gentile'' for risking her life to save the Bienstocks in her apartment during the war. The plaque still hangs outside the Arbiser Theater today, as a reminder of the selfless act that saved the Bienstocks and allowed for their stories to be told decades in the future.