Norman salsitz biography

OBITUARY NOTICE—

See index for CA sketch: Born May 6, 1920, in Kolbuszowa, Poland; died of pneumonia, October 11, 2006, in Boston, MA. Photographer, construction worker, and author. Salsitz was best known for his book about his World War II experiences as a Jew pretending to be a Christian and fighting in the Polish underground. Salsitz was born to a Jewish family with nine children, and his hometown was invaded by the Nazis in 1941. All of his family members were killed in the Holocaust, except for one brother. Salsitz, whose birth name was Naftali Saleschutz, was taken prisoner by the Germans. He was put in a slave labor battalion, but managed to escape. Joining the Polish underground, he successfully posed as a Christian with the help of a forged baptismal certificate that a priest gave him. Even among the anti-Nazi fighters, Salsitz could not admit he was Jewish because many Poles were just as anti-Semitic as the Nazis. He finally had to blow his c Norman salsitz documentary!