Los Angeles, CA – William Herskovic, who escaped from Auschwitz and helped inspire Belgium’s resistance to the Nazis during World War II, has died at the age of 91, at his Encino home after a lengthy battle with cancer.
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Three months after being sent from Belgium to Auschwitz, Herskovic escaped by cutting through a chain-link fence with two other prisoners using a pair of wire cutters he had hidden. It was on the first night of Hanukkah in 1942.
In his prewar home of Antwerp, Belgium, Herskovic delivered one of the earliest firsthand accounts of the atrocities of the Holocaust.
The resistance swiftly mobilized, placing bricks on railroad tracks to stop a train packed with hundreds of Jews bound for the camps. About 250 prisoners escaped.
Herskovic is survived by three daughters, two brothers, four grandchildren and a great-granddaughter.