Sam Pivnik

Szmuel "Sam" Pivnik (1 September 1926 – 30 August 2017) was a Polish Holocaust survivor, author and memoirist. He was the second son of Lajb Pivnik, a tailor, and Feigel Pivnik. He was born in Będzin, Poland.
Pivnik was registered in Auschwitz and tattooed with prisoner number 135913. On 27 December 1943, Pivnik was admitted to the prisoner infirmary in the Quarantine area KL Auschwitz II-Birkenau, B IIa, Block 9, with suspected typhus. On 19 January 1945 the camp at Fürstengrube was evacuated in the face of the advancing Red Army and prisoners who were fit enough to move were, initially, marched to a railhead at Gleiwitz. 
Pivnik spent the next three months on construction work before he – together with approximately 200 other former Fürstengrube prisoners – were evacuated by barge along the River Elbe to Holstein in northern Germany.
Pivnik was liberated by the British Army in Neustadt on 4 May 1945. His memoir "Survivor – Auschwitz, The Death March and My Fight for Freedom" was published on 30 August 2012. 
Pivnik died in London on 30 August 2017, two days before his 91st birthday of pneumonia-related complications.