Sara Najman Wolf, described as the “Matriarch of the survivor community” by Jean Cavender, director of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum, and who worked with her late husband Leo to help establish the museum, died May 12.  She was 89, and a longtime resident of greater St. Louis.

Cavender told the Jewish Light, “Sara, her sisters and a cousin survived Auschwitz and Bergen Belsen.  Sadly her mother perished in Auschwitz.  Sara often said that they survived because they stayed together.  She told me, ‘If one of my sisters or my cousin got sick, the others would lift her up and help her walk.’”

Sara Najman Wolf was born in Lodz, Poland on Feb. 17, 1928, the daughter of  Yehiel and Faga Najman.  Her future husband, Leo Wolf, the son of Ruben and Chaika Wolf, was born on Feb. 15, 1921 also in Lodz, which the Nazis converted into a horrific ghetto after they invaded Poland.  The Najman and Wolf families knew each other  before the war.

In September 1939, after the Nazis invaded and occupied Poland, when Leo was a teen and Sara was a child, they knew each other only casually.  They found themselves herded into the infamous Lodz Ghetto, where more than 230,000 Jews wee imprisoned in deplorable conditions similar to those of the Warsaw Ghetto.

Leo and Sara each experienced the now infamous cattle cars from which thousands of Lodz Ghetto Jews were deported to Auschwitz during a bitter cold winter.  They traveled separately but both ended up at Auscwhitz.  Neither Sara nor Leo would stay long at Auschwitz, where her mother, Faga Najman was killed.  Sara, her sisters and a cousin were able to survive by supporting each other physically and spiritually.

Within days, Sara was shipped out, eventually sent to clear forests and at one point put to work in a salt mine.  She described the conditions as “horrifying; you’d wake up in the morning and you would look around and see dead people,” she told the Jewish Light in a 2016 interview.

Asked if any one day was the worst, Sara said, “Every day was the bottom day.  They were all equally horrible.”

During the same period, Leo Wolf was sent through a succession of Nazi work and death camps—13 in all.  When he was liberated from Dachau, he weighed only 66 pounds.  Sara was also liberated by the British from Bergen Belsen as the Allies closed in on the Nazis.  None of Leo’s family survived.

Leo and Sara reunited at a displaced persons camp after the war.  They were married by a rabbi in 1948 at the camp, which was near Frankfort. 

When the Wolfs left Europe for the United States, they decided to settle in St. Louis, arriving around Labor Day in 1949.  Leo had just one dollar in his pocket.  Later he opened a successful restaurant, and still later founded the Wolf Construction Company, in Granite City,  which built many buildings in the area, and which still operates.

Both Sara and Leo were leaders within the local Holocaust survivors community and worked with the late Bill Kahn and the late Tom Green to push for the creation of the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center. 

“Sara was at Leo’s side every set of the way when we worked with Bill Kahn and Tom Green to establish our museum in St. Louis,” Cavender said. “After  surviving something as horrific as the Holocaust, Sara lived her life with good humor and grace.”

The Wolfs were longtime members of Kol Rinah (formerly Shaare Zedek Synagogue).

Survivors include sons Harvey (Leslie) Wolf and Michael Wolf. Anther son, Robert Wolf, predeceased her in death.  Also surviving are seven grandchildren and four great-grandchildren.  Leo Wolf died on March 4, 2016.

Funeral services were scheduled for Berger Memorial Chapel, 2 p.m., Tuesday, May 16.  Rabbi Noah Arnow of Kol Rinah will officiate. 

Memorial contributions preferred to the St. Louis Holocaust Museum and Learning Center, 12 Millstone Campus Drive, St. Louis, 63146.