In Tribute: ‘Visionary’ Sam Harris, Holocaust survivor and founder of Illinois Holocaust Museum, dies at 90

Sam Harris was just 4 years old when the Nazis invaded Poland. 

He and his nine family members were forced into a ghetto before all but he and two of his sisters were murdered, and Harris was forced into hiding, according to a recount he gave to the Illinois Holocaust Museum as part of its interactive Survivor Stories Experience. 

After the three were liberated by the Soviet army in 1945, Harris became one of the youngest survivors of the concentration camps during the Holocaust and moved to the United States, where eventually he was instrumental in creating the Illinois Holocaust Museum in Skokie. 

Harris, 90, died on April 1, confirmed Amanda Berman, communications manager for the museum. He died of natural causes at a rehabilitation center in Florida, a family member told the Chicago Tribune. 

“Sam was the most joyful person that you could ever hope to meet despite all of the traumas that he experienced as a very young child,” said Amanda Friedeman, an associate director of education at the museum who worked with Harris for 16 years. “He was not only capable of love but sought it out, exuded happiness and hope and joy, and actively worked to make sure that the people around him, whether they were his dearest friends or people he was meeting for the first time, felt seen and heard and appreciated and loved.”

She continued, “The Illinois Holocaust museum would not exist as we know it without Sam and he was so proud of it and knew that it needed to exist and knew that he could make it happen through his enthusiasm and his sheer force of will.”

Born Szlamek Rzeznik in Deblin, Poland, in 1935, Harris, his parents and his seven siblings were forced to live in a ghetto for three years before all but he and his sisters Rosa and Sarah were sent to the Treblinka concentration camp, he later recounted. 

Rosa, Harris’ older sister, worked as a slave laborer in a concentration camp outside of Deblin and hid Harris and his sister before the three were deported to the Polish city of Czestochowa and liberated in 1945, according to the Illinois Holocaust Museum.

Rosa eventually smuggled Harris and Sara to Austria and then New York City in 1947, where he was adopted by a family, moved to Chicago, and reconnected with his history at the World Gathering of Jewish Holocaust Survivors in Jerusalem, a museum webpage shows. 

Friedeman recounted the Illinois Holocaust Museum originally began as a small storefront in downtown Skokie after a neo-Nazi group proposed marching in the village in the 1970s. 

Harris started speaking about his experience in the Holocaust in the late 1970s and soon became involved with what was then known as the Holocaust Memorial Foundation of Illinois, acting as “a visionary” in undertaking fundraising efforts and garnering community support, Friedeman said.

He served as the museum’s president between 2002-2009 and successfully organized the efforts to build the 65,000-square-foot education center at 9603 Woods Drive in Skokie, Friedeman said, only stepping down from that role when the museum opened in 2009. 

After that, he served as the museum’s president emeritus, advocating for the museum and becoming one of the first Holocaust survivors to detail and record his personal history as part of an interactive, conversational exhibit for museum visitors to learn from, Friedeman said. 

Friedeman said she believes Harris’ most important legacies are his family, whom he loved more than anything, and the Illinois Holocaust Museum. 

“He was creating it really as a gift to the people of Illinois, and to the world more broadly, so that we would have the opportunity to learn about that little boy in a concentration camp in occupied Poland so could learn the stories of the incredible survivors in our community even long after they’re gone,” Friedeman said. 

“Because it’s not only essential that we remember and we learn from these survivors, but our lives are actually better for knowing about them — and he knew that he had the opportunity to make that happen.”

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