Haapalah / Aliyah Bet

In early 1943, the Piwnik family was forced to live in the Kamionka Ghetto in Bedzin.
The family was deported to Auschwitz II/Birkenau. where Sam Piwnik's father and mother, younger sister Chana and younger brothers Meir, Wolf and Josef were murdered on arrival.
Sam Piwnik's older sister, Handel, survived ten days before she was selected for the gas chambers.
He was selected for a work detail to go to KL Auschwitz III/Fürstengrube, a coal mine, where he was assigned to the construction detail, and appointed as a Vorarbeiter.
Sam Piwnik and brother, Nathan, survived Auschwitz.

On January 19, 1945, the camp at Fürstengrube was evacuated in the face of the Red Army advance, and prisoners who were fit enough to move were marched to a railhead at Gleiwitz.

On January 28, 1945, after nine days on the train, Sam Piwnik's group arrived at KL Dora-Mittelbau.
Sam Piwnik spent the next three months on construction work before he and 200 other former Fürstengrube prisoners - were evacuated by barge along the River Elbe to Holstein.

In May, 1945, Sam Piwnik and other former Fürstengrube prisoners, were marched to Neustadt.
On May 3, 1945, they were loaded aboard the former German cruise ship, Cap Arcona, used as a prison ship for concentration camp inmates along with Thielbek, Athen and Deutschland.

On May 3, 1945, the flotilla, Cap Arcona, Thielbek, Athen and Deutschland, was attacked by fighter-bombers of the Royal Air Force , as part of general attacks on shipping in the Baltic by RAF Typhoons of 83 Group of the 2nd Tactical Air Force, commanded by Sir Arthur Coningham,
The RAF commanders ordering the strike claimed the ships carried escaping SS officers, fleeing to German-controlled Norway with a dilapidated and completely rusted ship, but the ships carried prisoners, mostly Jews from 28 different nationalities: American, Belarussian, Belgian, Canadian, Czechoslovakian, Danish, Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, French, German, Greek, Hungarian, Italian, Latvian, Lithuanian, Luxembourger, Norwegian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Spanish, Swiss, Ukrainian, Yugoslavian and others
Both the Cap Arcona and the Thielbek were set on fire.
Severely damaged and set on fire, Cap Arcona capsized.
The death toll was estimated at 5,000 people.

From Germany, Sam Pivnik joined relatives in England.

Sam Pivnik served in the 79th Brigade.