On Tuesday April 17th, 2026, Yom Hashoah, Holocaust Memorial Day, the Yale community gathered at the Anderson Mansion. Toby Hecht, Director of Shabtai, addressed the students, commemorating the six million Jews murdered by the German People.
Perez Academy is honored to present this film in memory of Shmuel (Sam) Elyakim Schwartz, member of the 504th Parachute Infantry Division of the 82nd Airborne, and Pathfinder of the US Army.
Sam jumped missions in Operations Husky, Neptune, D Day, and the Battle of the Bulge. Toward the end of the War he participated in the liberation of Nazi Death Camps.
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Toby Hecht: So good evening. Again, my name is Toby Hecht. Read this from here. Okay. Today on the calendar is the Hebrew date of the 27th of Nisan. And it was today concluding Yom Hashoah Holocaust Remembrance Day. And in commemoration of this day, I would like to share an incredible story. Let me begin in July 2022, I was on a kosher cruise, a river cruise in France, traveling from Paris to Normandy and back with my mother and several sisters and sisters in law. Most passengers on the ship on the trip were retracing the footsteps of family members who had fought in either World War. After touring the beaches at Normandy and the Normandy American Cemetery, our boat started the trip back to Paris. On our last night on the Seine with a fresh memory of heroes on our mind, we gathered and heard personal reflections shared by descendants of those who fought for liberty and freedom from tyranny. Esther from Long Island told us the following story about her father, Shmuel Elyakim Schwarz. He was raised in a Chassidic family in Hungary, one of seven kids, six boys and one girl. Shmuel, as a kid was unruly and difficult to manage, and after getting kicked out of yeshiva at the age of 13, his family sent him to Israel and about three years later, he ended up on the shores of America, specifically the streets of New York, as a young, rambunctious 16 year old looking for work.
Toby Hecht: He was a strong kid with macho bravado who wanted muscles to go with it. He was working out in a gym one day when he overheard two ex-cons talking about joining the army, where one could get a steady paycheck. Now Shmuel or Sam, as he was later known, speaking mostly Hungarian and Yiddish, barely knew English, but like the two guys, he knew, the country was getting ready for a war. He also knew his mother and siblings were still in Europe and thought maybe he could help them get, maybe he could help them get out this way. So he decided to follow their lead. The US Army was working on a new division, one that was filled with risk and danger. Being the daredevil he was, Shmuel decided to enlist in what would become the 82nd Airborne Division. The first paratroopers, the most daring missions. He lied about his age and he signed up. After passing all the physical exams, he trained for months to become a Pathfinder and I believe the 504th platoon. The first of the parachutes to drop over enemy lines to find a safe path for the rest of the unit. Operation husky, Neptune and D-Day, hence his daughter traveling to Normandy, where some of the operations he was on. They were known as the Devils in baggy pants. He jumped missions in North Africa, Sicily, Belgium, France, to name a few, often being the only one to survive a jump and or mission.
Toby Hecht: His daughter, named Dre, said that there was one miracle after the next, and she said it was as though a Mal'ach, an angel, was protecting him every step of the way. He served for three years and, through it all, saw things no eyes should ever see. He came back, got married and had five daughters. They didn't know much growing up and they didn't have an easy household. His parents had few possessions when they died. Shmuel never got an education but worked hard and all of his daughters became professionals in different fields. They knew bits and pieces of what happened during the war, that he was a paratrooper, that his six siblings and his mother were murdered, and that he jumped in the Battle of the Bulge, and that he did feel that there was an angel every step of the way. There was an Air Force jacket with all sorts of medals attached to it. After both parents passed away, there was a lottery and Dre got to keep the jacket. Having no idea what any of the medals were, she did research through a Facebook page with people interested in history and collectors of World War Two memorabilia. She started uploading photos of different braids and medals and got 300 excited responses. One person said he had never seen a jacket with so many medals. There was one patch, a devil on a round patch that was created before the war. The online people said there were only three known of those jackets, and now this one was the fourth.
Toby Hecht: There was a bidding war. Everyone wanted to buy the jacket from her. One person told her, sell your firstborn before you sell that jacket. Long story short, the jacket is front and center at the museum in Israel, honoring 1.5 million Jewish soldiers who fought the Germans in World War Two. It seemed no other entity worldwide cared about these heroes. But as incredible as this story of Purple Hearts and devil patches is, here's the kicker. Esther on the boat in France tells us that she was paying a Shiva call to a woman she knew on Long Island. As she walks into the home, she sees her friend Esther, also Esther. Esther Koppel Halberstam handing a picture to a Cassidic Rebbe named Rabbi Maisel, who was also sitting in the Shiva house with a huge group of his Chassidim, his followers, from Brooklyn. Esther recognized the picture. They had the same one in their album at home. It was her father in the middle and two survivors from the concentration camp on either side. Shocked, she asked her friend, what are you doing with the picture of my father? The Rebbe sitting there, Rabbi Maisel turned to her, also in shock, as did others in the room, and said, that's your father? It was a tumult of emotions. The Rebbe proceeded to tell her a story. He and his father were in that concentration camp, and Shmuel was one of the people who liberated them.
Toby Hecht: He saved their lives and others. Even as Shmuel found his dead brother in the pile of bodies, the survivors there were so weak, ill and starved, eating grass. He didn't have an education, but he had a keen sense about him, and he couldn't, he knew they couldn't overwhelm their stomachs, their shrunken stomachs, with too much food. So he helped them eat slowly, often spoon feeding them and taking care of them. They didn't even know he was Jewish. They thought of Jews as being in concentration camps, not heroes in uniform. He asked her for, the Rebbe asked Esther if her father was still alive, and she said yes. Though he suffered from Alzheimer's. The Rebbe wanted to visit him right then from the Shiva house. So Esther called her mother and told her to expect a Rebbe and his entire entourage to their small apartment. The Rebbe came with his entourage and sat and spoke to Shmuel in Yiddish. And when her father passed away, the Rebbe asked if he could give a eulogy for this man that he referred to as a Tzadik, a righteous man. Now, let me explain something to you here. For a Chassidic man to go into a more I'd say a non-Chassidic funeral home and give a talk in English in front of both men and women, where the separation was pretty low was, might have seemed unseemly, but that didn't matter to the Rebbe.
Toby Hecht: He felt he needed to pay his last respects to the man who saved him and his father, who was a Rebbe in his own right, whom they never forgot and who they felt they owed their lives and the lives of their Chassidim and descendants to. And to share the story with everyone there. When he himself, the Rebbe, passed away last year, Dre told me that two sisters went to pay their respects. They were worried about being able to come inside. After all, they're not Chassidim, and they weren't- they don't dress in the the typical Chassidic garb as a woman who are, you know, part of the Chassidic community. But armed with the photo of their father with the Rebbe and his father from that Liberation Day, they went anyway. When they reached the Shiva house in Sea Gate, Brooklyn, and showed the picture, everybody stood up for them in respect and made a pathway to the family members on the men's side to where they were treated, to their shock, with royalty. Because everyone there, all the thousands of the Chassidim that were there who had come through, knew who their father, Shmuel Elyakim Schwartz, was. And as one family family member said that the Rebbe carried the photo from that Liberation Day in his pocket. Every single day it went from shirt to shirt to shirt. It never, ever left his side. Now, to be honest, I wasn't planning to speak here tonight, but for some reason I was remembering Esther and her father these last few days, and I scrolled through my photos and came across this photo.
Toby Hecht: This photo of liberation was in my photos for some reason. I couldn't find- I remembered that her name was Esther, but I couldn't find her and I finally found her in text messages from 2022 where she had sent me another photo of her father. And I called her, and I spoke to her and her sister to confirm these details. And after hearing it all, I felt compelled to share it here on this important day, Holocaust memory. And so tonight, I want to honor this man, Shmuel Elyakim Schwartz, also known as Sam Schwartz and his family for his profound righteousness and heroism as an American soldier who risked his life in the countless missions defending the American flag, to saving starving survivors, to raising a beautiful Jewish family in New York. Today, we only know this story because of the fortuitous series of events with his daughters, putting together the pieces of their father that they knew. An unsung hero who has since become a legend. And so, God willing, I'd like to say that we're going to put this, this exact photo on the wall with a little description in the wall, in the hallway, or maybe in this room of, of Sam Schwartz. May his memory be for a blessing.