Film Review: JACK AND SAM
by Karen Pecota

Jordan Matthew Horowitz, USA 2023

Told in their own words, two Holocaust survivors, Jack Waksal, and Sam Ron, raised in different Jewish communities in Poland, each share their journey as teenagers to stay alive and how they became closer than brothers while working every day in the Pionki concentration camp during World War II in JACK AND SAM. Camp Pionki was deep in the forest, the Kozienice Wilderness and the largest ammunition factory in Poland occupied by the Nazis.

Jack and Sam describe the atrocities they each lived through that we have only seen in movies like SCHINDLER’S LIST or similar World War II films. Jack said, "When the Germans came into Poland, our idyllic life changed." Sam recalls, "There was so much anti-Semitism. On November 9, 1938, Kristallnacht was the first violence against Jews in Germany." Their road to survival was long but their youth was a saving grace.

Once in Pionki, the desire to escape this camp was for many only a dream; but for Jack and fifteen others, it became a reality when it was rumored Auschwitz was their destiny. The group successfully escaped into the forest and all but one made it past the German firing squad. It was known that the Germans would not chase after them due to superstitions about the ancient forbidden forest. The group hid in the Kozienice Wilderness for months and survived by using a shovel to dig for water. Sam worked in the camp until the liberation.

Jack and Sam pursued a path toward US citizenship and without knowing both settled in Ohio. Horowitz notes, "Jack and Sam were miraculously reunited after 80 years at an event put on by the US Holocaust Museum." The two spend the precious time they have left rekindling their friendship and teaching others about the dangers of hatred. The secret to their story of survival stems from the power of friendship to overcome unimaginable adversity.