Shalom Omri was born as Shalom Aharon Schwartz in the town of Hrubieszow, Poland, to his father Yosef Schwartz and his mother Miriam Hoffman, a brother to his older brother, Melech, and to his younger sister, Freidele. The town was a “typical Jewish town – a center of an agricultural region full of greenery, vegetation, and forests,” as he described it, with about half of the population being Jewish. Farmers’ markets were held, where the local farmers would gather – “days of chaos and fun.” His parents owned two fabric and sewing shops, one of which was upscale and served Polish officials and military officers.
The family was traditional and very Zionist, large and warm. There were many uncles, aunts and cousins who would gather during holidays and on Shabbat. Shalom’s childhood was one of independence and adventure, with long hikes on Shabat in the fields, going berry picking and apple picking, swimming in the river in the summer, and ice-skating on it in the winter. Summers were spent in the mountains at the resort town of Zakopane. Shalom was a mischievous, big and strong child – a “Zhlob” – and he didn’t hesitate to fight when Polish children called him a “Zhid” (a derogatory term for Jew).
The Germans entered Hrubieszow in 1939 when Shalom was 17. Immediately, numerous restrictions and a nightly curfew were imposed, shops were looted, and people were arrested and executed. Rumors began circulating in the town about what was happening in other towns, but although the Jews understood the situation was bad, they didn’t comprehend the full extent of the danger.
In December 1939, all the men and boys, aged 15 to 65, were ordered to assemble in an open area outside the town. About 2,000 people were gathered there. No one knew what was going to happen, but when the survivors of the Chelm death march arrived, those of them who had survived a day of walking/running 50 kilometers, it became clear that something terrible was about to unfold.
From then on, during the three days of the “Death March,” the Germans starved, humiliated, and beat the people, shooting the weak, shooting the last ones in line, or just shooting randomly, and burying people alive. Of the approximately 4,000 marchers who had left Hrubieszow and Chelm, only a few hundred reached the end of the march at the bridge over the Bug River, beyond which the Russian army controlled the territory.
Shalom and a few other survivors decided to escape. Under the cover of darkness, they swam across the frozen river and reached the part of Poland that was under Russian control (Shalom’s story about the bridge over the Bug River is detailed in a separate text).
The rest of the war was spent with his father cutting wood in the Siberian cold, in a family camp to which they had been deported by the Russians. They later moved to Soviet-controlled southern regions, where Shalom was conscripted to “The Labor Front” to build a massive dam by manual labor.
After the war, Shalom made his way back home, to Hrubieszow, only to find that no trace of his bustling hometown remained. His mother, sister, and relatives who had remained in the town had been murdered. The coins and gold jewelry he had hidden with his father in the cellar of their house were gone. His father sold the house for a sum sufficient to buy a warm coat, and they left.
Shalom joined the “Kibbutz” of the Dror Movement to immigrate to Israel. While in a Kibbutz in Germany, he had a chance meeting with a soldier from the Jewish Brigade in the British army and asked him about Captain Schwartz – his brother Melech, who had immigrated to Israel at the age of 14. “He’s, my commander!” the soldier replied, to Shalom’s astonishment. From there, things progressed quickly, and Shalom boarded an illegal immigrant ship in France that was caught by the British. On July 25, 1946, he was sent to a detention camp in Atlit, Israel.
After serving in the IDF (Israeli Defence Army) during the War of Independence, Shalom began his new life in Israel. He worked at various jobs – as a construction worker, as a sailor in the merchant fleet, and as a taxi driver. Together with a few friends, around a small table at a café, they founded “Yael Droma” – a taxi and transport cooperative. This company became his life’s work, and he worked there for 40 years as a VP and later as a consultant to the CEO (after “Yael Droma” was acquired by “Aviv” and later by “Shigur”) until his late 80’s.
In the summer of 1950, Shalom married Nechama Keizman, also from Hrubieszow, and together they started a family. They had three children: Daniel (Dani), Miriam (Miri), and Gilad (Gili). His half siblings Shoshana and Mordechai were born in Israel from his father’s second marriage.
Shalom was a visionary, with big ideas and large gesture; a person focused on giving and positivity. From the traumatic experiences and losses of the youth, emerged a man who did not wallow in tragedy nor lose faith in humanity. He dedicated his life to the three things most important to him: love of human beings, love of family, and love of the Land of Israel.
He lived up to the principal of “love of human beings” every day, always judging people favorably, trying to see their point of view and understanding them, and trusting them unless they proved otherwise.
He rebuilt his family from the ashes. He reconstructed the family tree and began searching for any surviving relatives – finding cousins in the USA, Canada, and Israel, and reconnecting them to the family through visits abroad, regular letters and greetings, and hosting them at his home in Israel.
The Land of Israel – the State – was for him a miracle. The young man who stood humiliated and powerless before the Nazis saw the State of Israel as the solution for the Jewish people, the only place in the world that was “ours”, and he was most proud when his children and grandchildren served in the IDF or contributed to the country through settlement, agriculture, and academia.
And no less important: the commemoration of the Holocaust. This was of utmost importance to him. He commemorated the town and the Holocaust in his special way – with optimism, focusing on connection and unity instead of distance and hatred. It began with the initiative to establish the “Kedoshei Hrubieszow” organization and the commemoration of the town and its residents in the “Hrubieszow Register”, and continued with the rescue of gravestones from the Jewish cemetery (which the Germans had uprooted and used for paving) to create a memorial site in Hrubieszow, designed by Abraham Zilberstein and with the help of several survivors of the town. To ensure the site’s preservation, Shalom made personal contact with the town mayor and maintained ongoing contact with his successors. An additional step for the site’s preservation was the creation of an annual visit program to Hrubieszow for students of the Kiryat Sharet High School in Holon, where students met with the town’s students, stayed with them, and spent time together.
Throughout his life, Shalom sought to conduct himself in peaceful ways, as befitting his name, focusing on what is good and adding goodness to the world.