I was privileged tonight to listen to Jack Sittsamer of Squirrel Hill describe some of his experiences in Nazi concentration camps. His is a stark tale with lessons about the human condition.
Sittsamer was in Cranberry Township as part of the American Conflicts Roundtable, a series of guest lectures organized by Seneca Valley High School history teacher Jim Lucot. All of the sessions I attended this year were packed with students, parents and other interested adults.
Sittsamer had no tales of heroism or kindness from his time in the camps. In fact, he humbly admitted that after his soup bowl was stolen, he simply stole another from somebody else. Without their bowls, prisoners were not fed.
Every prisoner had to fend for himself because the Nazis had informers among the prisoners. He lived with the daily threat of death, and the Nazis gave prisoners no hope that they would ever leave the camps alive.
The Squirrel Hill resident lost his entire family to the camps. He lived in a small town near Krakow, Poland. After the Nazis rousted them from their home, he saw his father — a World War I veteran who had been wounded in combat — killed because he couldn’t keep up with a forced march. He was separated from most of his family, and his mother and siblings all died in camps.
The only kindness afforded him came just after his liberation by American soldiers. He and his best friend wandered into the German town of Linz, where a widow — Mrs. Weber — took them in and nursed them back to health for three months.
Sittshamer finally left Europe and moved the Pittsburgh in 1949. He married, raised and family and worked for the same company for 37 years — never speaking of his concentration camp experience. He said he even lied to co-workers about the camp tattoo on his wrist. But after his retirement some 20 years ago, he was convinced to tell his story, and that’s been his mission since.
He returned to Poland for the first time seven years ago and found the mass grave where his father and 300 others had been buried.